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ANN ELISE MCCAFFREY, ESQ

I have a decade of experience working on behalf of immigrant children, families, and prisoners to help them gain protections and legal status in the United States. As a staff attorney working in the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project (NYIFUP), I represented New Yorkers detained by immigration authorities (ICE) in the first ever program to fully represent detained immigrants in deportation proceedings. Additionally, I worked with the Community Legal Resource Network (CLRN), through funding from the City of New York, to screen New Yorkers for citizenship at different council member offices and community centers in the Bronx, Queens and Manhattan.  My litigation experience includes applications for cancellation of removal, asylum, convention against torture, U visa, SIJS, and other applications for status including extensive work on applications for naturalization. 

My expertise includes advising criminal defense lawyers on criminal cases that jeopardize immigration status of their clients. As a staff attorney in the immigration practice at the Bronx Defenders for two years, I worked on hundreds of cases to find immigration-safe dispositions where non-U.S. citizens were charged with crimes.

My legal career began on the Arizona/México border, assisting children arrested and detained for deportation as a legal assistant with the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project. Additional experience includes positions at a transnational workers’ center in Mexico, two public defender organizations in New York City, and the Immigrant Justice Project of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Atlanta, Georgia.

I graduated from CUNY School of Law in 2012 and am admitted to practice law in New York Appellate Division for the Second Department and in the Southern District of New York and the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. I speak Spanish.