As legal director at the National Immigration Project—a national membership organization that provides legal and technical support to attorneys across the United States—Michelle Mendez ’08 does everything from designing and leading training sessions to conducting federal litigation in defense of noncitizens. But no matter the task at hand, her mission remains the same: to defend the defenseless, hold the government accountable, and ensure justice for all.
Mendez’s commitment took shape early on. Growing up in Virginia, surrounded by Civil War history, she was drawn from childhood to issues of equality, equity, and the misuse of power. The anti-immigrant sentiment that followed in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, which occurred while she was studying international relations at the University of Richmond, further deepened her commitment to serving marginalized and at-risk populations.
Mendez got a taste of client-facing work as a legal assistant for the CAIR Coalition (now the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights), a nonprofit that provides free legal services to immigrants who are detained and at risk of deportation. She also explored the policy side of immigration advocacy at the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
By the time she arrived at Maryland Carey Law, her course was set. Even before signing up for the Immigration Clinic, Mendez, who speaks French, reached out to its then-director, Professor Maureen Sweeney, and volunteered to serve as an interpreter for a Cameroonian asylum seeker. (Sweeney now directs the Chacón Center for Immigrant Justice.)
She also threw herself into international human rights, spending a semester-long externship at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in Costa Rica in her final year. While in Costa Rica, Mendez won a two-year fellowship administered by Equal Justice Works, an organization that promotes public service careers for law students and legal professionals.
The fellowship, which was sponsored by DLA Piper, allowed Mendez to work on behalf of whatever community and cause she chose. After spending a year at Casa de Maryland (now We Are Casa), which provides citizenship and legal services to immigrant communities, she moved to Catholic Charities in Washington, DC. She wound up staying for several years, eventually becoming senior managing attorney in the organization’s Immigration Legal Services department.
“It was a great learning experience,” says Mendez, who appreciated the autonomy that came with working at a nonprofit. “We didn’t have billable hours, and we could really help the people we wanted to help, including detained people and those who needed to appeal their cases.”
Mendez often found herself representing unaccompanied minors who were eligible for Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS), which offers a path to lawful permanent residency for youths under the age of 21. But those cases must initially be brought in state court, and at the time, the Maryland Circuit Courts defined an adult as someone over the age of 18—which meant that Mendez and her colleagues often had to scramble to submit emergency filings before their clients aged out of eligibility under state, if not federal, law.
Mendez therefore spearheaded a successful effort to pass a bill in the Maryland General Assembly in 2014 that redefined the term “child” to mean an unmarried individual under the age of 21 for the purposes of seeking SIJS—a legislative fix that allowed Mendez and her colleagues more time to seek relief for their young clients.
“I was very happy, because so many kids got to stay here with legal status,” she says.
Seeking to pass her skills and expertise on to others, Mendez also taught at Yale Law School and Catholic University Columbus School of Law and led the National Institute for Trial Advocacy’s immigration programs. In 2015, she became director of the Defending Vulnerable Populations Program to the Catholic Legal Immigration Network (CLINIC), which trains nonprofit immigration legal service providers across the country.
She didn’t stop representing clients, however. In addition to suing the Department of Homeland Security, for instance, Mendez led CLINIC’s pro bono efforts at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas—the largest family detention center in the United States—where she discovered that many of the women and children who were released nonetheless received in absentia orders for removal. Working with a group of Yale law students, Mendez launched an effort to reopen those orders; and while the process took years, it was ultimately successful.
“We won 100% of those cases,” Mendez says.
Mendez has continued to pursue that combination of education and litigation at the National Immigration Project, where her work runs the gamut from working on federal cases to running trial skills workshops and providing technical assistance to other attorneys.
And at the end of the day, nothing makes her happier than hearing from attorneys who have won relief for their clients with her help.
“That’s so fulfilling,” says Mendez, “because it’s a way we can all work together in community to protect a vulnerable population of people—and in turn, protect the democratic principles of this country.”
Editor's Note: This story was originally published in Maryland Carey Law's 2026 annual magazine.