Every summer, HIRC hosts students from across the country for internships at the Clinic. We are thrilled to welcome our latest group of interns who will be working with us for the next few months.
Law students
Sarah M. Deibler (Cleary Fellow)
Sarah is a third-year S.J.D. student at Harvard Law School, where her research focuses on legal responses to non-recent sexual violence. She has also worked as a teaching fellow for Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Harvard. Since moving to the U.S., Sarah has worked with a number of organizations providing pro bono legal services. She has served as a summer public interest fellow at Project Citizenship and volunteers with the PAIR Project. This summer, in addition to interning with HIRC, she will also be spending a week with the Dilley Pro Bono Project in Texas, assisting women in the initial stages of applying for asylum. Sarah holds an LL.B. from the London School of Economics and an LL.M. from Northeastern University School of Law.
Kami Groom
Kami Groom is a rising 2L at Michigan Law, where she pursues her academic interests in immigration and refugee law, international law, and international human rights law. During her 1L year, Kami participated in Michigan’s Immigration and Labor Law Association, the Syrian Accountability Project, and the Unemployment Insurance Clinic. Before law school, Kami served as an immigration paralegal at Mintz Levin in Boston, an English Teacher in Taiwan, and a Teach For America corps member in Kansas City, MO, where she served New American students and their families. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and Anthropology from Washington University in St. Louis and a Master of Arts degree in the Humanities from the University of Chicago. When Kami is not busy with work or school, she enjoys watching old films, reading anything by J.R.R. Tolkien, and playing competitive ultimate frisbee with two-time national champion, Boston Brute Squad.
Giselle M. Rodriguez
Giselle M. Rodriguez was born in Boston, Massachusetts but lived 10 years in Puerto Rico and is of Cuban and Puerto Rican ethnicities. Giselle graduated magna cum laude from Regis College, in which she completed a double major in Political Science and Criminal Justice. In 2016. Giselle began her law school career and became an AmeriCorps member at the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition. Immigration has always been near and dear to Giselle’s heart – her father came to the United States from Cuba. Her parents are her inspiration; both have tremendously served the immigrant communities of the city of Boston. Today, Giselle is a law student at Massachusetts School of Law, and upon graduating she hopes to continue to serve the immigrants communities of Massachusetts as an immigration lawyer.
Undergraduates
Mariana Ferreira
Mariana Ferreira is a rising junior at Boston College studying Ethics and Social Justice within the International Studies Department. She was born in Boston, but raised in Connecticut. She is the daughter of two immigrants from South America (Colombia and Venezuela) and the oldest of three siblings. Before this internship, Mariana tutored students in Spanish, worked as a summer intern at Congressman Jim Himes’ Office, and volunteered for various non-profit organizations. She is passionate about human rights and very excited to be working at the HIRC this summer!
Angelica Merino Monge
Angelica Merino Monge is a student at Bard College, NY, and is currently working towards her bachelor’s degree in Political Studies and Human Rights. After graduating in 2021, she hopes to attend law school to become an immigration lawyer to help the immigrant community.
Franco Savastano
Franco is a rising third-year at The University of Chicago, where he is pursuing a double major in Economics and History. He is the son of two Peruvians and was born and raised in Washington DC alongside his younger sister. Academically, he is interested in political philosophy, 20th-century history, and economic history and policy. Outside of the classroom, he is passionate about soccer—which he plays at the university level—, multiculturalism, and immigrant justice.
Logan Seymour
Logan recently graduated magna cum laude with Phi Beta Kappa honors from Amherst College, where he majored in Law, Jurisprudence, and Social Thought. His scholarly interests include international relations, liberal movements in the Southern United States, immigration reform, and the abolition of capital punishment. He plans to attend law school, with the intent of practicing as a civil rights attorney.
Crimmigration
Mariana Dambriunas
Maria is a rising 3L at Harvard Law School, with a strong interest in constitutional law and immigration policy. Prior to law school, she was a paralegal at the Legal Aid Society in Brooklyn, NY where her office defended tenants in their eviction proceedings in housing court. She also served as an AmeriCorps volunteer through City Year New Orleans where she assisted in a high school algebra classroom. As an undergraduate at the University of Michigan, she was a part of the successful student activist effort to extend in-state tuition to undocumented immigrants from the state of Michigan. In all of these settings, she has seen how immigration law and policy issues impact people’s lives and is excited to bring her experience and passion to HIRC.
Lilli Y. Garza
Lilli Y. Garza is from Milwaukee, Wisconsin and is a rising senior at Colby College in Maine where she is an Environmental Policy and Studio Art double major. She is passionate about environmental justice and social justice and she loves being outside. Her family is from Oaxaca, Mexico and she loves pork tamales and refried beans.
International
Yosef Brander
Yosef is a rising 3L at Tel Aviv University Law School. His academic interests include transitional justice, refugee law, constitutional law, and international public law. This past year, Yosef served as a member of Tel Aviv Law’s Clinic for Refugee Rights, where he assisted in providing legal services and preparing petitions for refugee and asylum cases. Yosef plans on pursuing a career in international law, focusing on the refugee crisis. As a grandchild of Holocaust survivors, Yosef has always felt very passionately about and connected to the issues facing refugees and asylum seekers.
Margaret Turnbull
Margaret joins us all the way from Australia where she lives with her family. She will graduate in October with a Bachelor of Laws (Honours) from Charles Darwin University. Her passion for Earth Justice, particularly the intersection between human rights and transnational environmental law, compelled her to study law. Margaret has a Bachelor of Applied Science (Environmental Resource Management) and a Masters of Arts (Social Ecology), and experience working in environmental policy and programs including for local and federal government, and in NGOs in Australia and overseas. When not studying she can be found bushwalking, bird watching and spending time at the beach with her family.
Thanks to all our interns for choosing to spend your summer with HIRC and the Crimmigration Clinic!