Nationally recognized immigration scholar Ana Corina “Cori” Alonso-Yoder has joined the faculty at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law as an assistant professor of law and director of the Immigration Clinic, a critical part of Maryland Carey Law’s Chacón Center for Immigrant Justice.
Professor Maureen Sweeney, the Chacón Center’s director, founded and has taught the Immigration Clinic, which provides legal services for low-income immigrants, for over two decades. She is “thrilled” to welcome Alonso-Yoder to lead the clinic.
“Professor Alonso-Yoder has deep experience in both representing individuals affected by immigration law and in pursuing systemic change. She is passionately committed to the Chacón Center’s goal of creating a future in which all Maryland families and residents are stable and secure regardless of immigration status,” said Sweeney. “After 21 years teaching the Immigration Clinic, it is my personal honor to pass the torch to her, so that I can turn my full attention to the strategic leadership of the Chacón Center, whose work is especially critical at this moment in our country’s history.”
The Chacón Center for Immigrant Justice at Maryland Carey Law was founded in 2021 thanks to a significant donation from Marco and Debbie Chacón. As well as the Immigration Clinic, the center is home to Maryland Carey Law’s Federal Appellate Immigration Clinic. Beyond direct client representation through the clinics, the Chacón Center offers community “know your rights” programming and participates in legislative advocacy work.
Alonso-Yoder comes to Maryland Carey Law after teaching at George Washington University Law School, Howard University Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, and American University Washington College of Law, where she led the Immigrant Justice Clinic. In her public interest legal practice, she has worked on a variety of equal justice issues, with a special emphasis on advocacy for LGBTQI+ and HIV-positive immigrants.
The daughter of a social worker mother, who was born in the United States, and an immigrant father, who taught in public schools, Alonso-Yoder was inspired to study law after her family experienced the pain of her dad being threatened with deportation.
“My journey to becoming a lawyer was in reaction to seeing some of the struggles that my family had with the law,” said Alonso-Yoder.
Joining the faculty at Maryland Carey Law gives her an opportunity to continue her mission of helping immigrants like her father navigate the U.S. legal system while training the next generation of immigration lawyers.
Although the Immigration Clinic enables students with various professional goals to gain real-world lawyering experience, Alonso-Yoder was pleased to learn that all six of her fall semester clinic students are interested in pursuing immigration law. She credits Maryland Carey Law’s reputation as a hub of expertise in the immigration space for drawing these passionate students, saying that as the clinic’s new leader, she is “standing on the shoulders of giants,” especially Sweeney, who have built up the program.
Second-year student Juliet Ihediohanma is one of the six.
“One of the main reasons I chose Maryland Carey Law was its strong expertise in immigration law and the opportunities it provides for hands-on experience,” she said. “The Immigration Clinic, in particular, allows me to work directly with clients and engage deeply with the issues that brought me to law school in the first place.”
Ihediohanma and her classmates are developing lawyering skills as they represent low-income immigrants in cases relating to immigration status, as well as non-profit organizations on immigrants’ rights issues—all under the close supervision of Alonso-Yoder and other Chacón Center faculty.
The combination of individual representation and community advocacy is at the heart of Alonso-Yoder’s vision for the clinic to combine direct legal services with efforts toward structural change.
“I want students to understand what it looks like representing individual people navigating our immigration system,” said Alonso-Yoder. “But I also want them to have the opportunity to work with community partners, public officials, and non-profits that are doing policy advocacy work on the overarching system that allows so much inequity to exist.”
Adam Sundquist ’26, another student in the clinic, has high hopes for the experience.
“I'm most excited to have the opportunity to make a positive change in people's lives, and I can tell that Professor Alonso-Yoder feels the same way,” said the 3L. “While our clinic work has only just begun, Professor Alonso-Yoder has already set a clear theme for this semester that I believe we all agree with: the client comes first.”
As Alonso-Yoder begins her leadership of the Immigration Clinic, she is also taking her place among the scholars at the Chacón Center who are leading voices in national immigration law. Her legal scholarship focuses on immigration legislation and the impacts of state, local, and federal laws on immigrant communities. Her publications include “Plenary Power: Teaching the Immigration Law of the Territories,” in the Stetson Law Review; “Imperialist Immigration Reform,” in the Fordham Law Review; “Making a Name for Themselves,” in the Rutgers University Law Review; and “Publicly Charged: A Critical Examination of Immigrant Public Benefit Restrictions,” in the Denver Law Review.
In 2024, the UCLA Law Williams Institute awarded “Making a Name for Themselves,” which explores legal name changes, with a prestigious Dukeminier Award.
Alonso-Yoder’s forthcoming work includes a book chapter titled “Race and the Impacts of the First Crimmigration Controls Today,” in the Racial Injustice and Resistance Handbook and the article “Mandated Reporting and the Legal Educator’s Duty” (with Eve Rips) in the Journal of Legal Education. In April, The George Washington Law Review published her timely commentary (with Tania N. Valdez) on the case of Kilmar Ábrego García who was unlawfully deported and detained in a Salvadoran prison.
Currently, she is working on an interdisciplinary project with a political scholar in New Mexico investigating the impacts of potentially overturning the 1982 U.S. Supreme Court case Plyler v. Doe, which established that denying undocumented children access to free public K-12 education violates the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
Alonso-Yoder is regularly consulted on immigration issues by local and national media outlets. Her commentary on immigrants’ rights has been featured by ABC News, The Hill, Law360, and the Baltimore Sun, among others.
Prior to teaching, Alonso-Yoder was the supervising attorney at Whitman-Walker Health, the country’s longest serving medical-legal partnership. Early in her legal career, she represented low-income immigrants in family law and immigration matters at Ayuda, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit providing legal, social, and language services to low-income immigrants.
Alonso-Yoder earned her JD from American University Washington College of Law and AB from Georgetown University.