Immigrants First

Ms. Morgan is of counsel at Immigrants First. She has experience with removal defense and asylum. She is passionate about helping all immigrants build productive lives in the United States.

As a student attorney at American University International Human Rights Law Clinic, Ms. Morgan, along with another colleague, defended a mentally ill immigrant who had been detained for two years before Arlington Immigration Court. During the first year of his detention, the client's mental health deteriorated so much that he no longer spoke at all. She successfully negotiated with the Fairfax Office of Detention and Removal Operations to get the client transferred to a facility better equipped to treat his mental illness, and she obtained a favorable disposition of his removal proceedings.

Ms. Morgan organized a private working meeting between immigrant rights advocates and Commissioners Gonzalez and Pinheiro of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. At the meeting, Ms. Morgan and other immigrant rights advocates presented stories of actual detainees with mental illnesses and evidence of the lack of adequate mental health treatment for immigrant detainees in the United States.

Ms. Morgan was a law clerk for Maggio & Kattar PC, where she worked on cases involving waivers of inadmissibility and U visas. During her studies, she researched the exploitation of migrant domestic workers from Indonesia and the Philippines and the trafficking of women for sexual and labor exploitation.

Prior to law school, Ms. Morgan was the development planner at the National Organization for Women (NOW), the largest women's organization advocating for greater economic justice and political equality for women, respect for reproductive rights, greater recognition of LGBT rights, and an end to violence against women and racism. Because of her work at NOW, she became an activist leader with Amnesty International USA's DC Women's Human Rights Action Team, where she educated the public on local, national, and international women's human rights issues. Ms. Morgan has firsthand experience working with refugee groups. In 1999, she participated in the Peace and Conflict Resolution seminar which studied the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the resulting Palestinian refugee crises. She traveled to the West Bank and Gaza, visited refugee camps, and talked to various stakeholders in the conflict. In 2003, she participated in the Project Dharamsala Experiential Learning trip, where she traveled to India and worked with the Tibetan refugee population in Dharamsala. Ms. Morgan's experiences traveling to the West Bank, Gaza, and India and her meeting refugees in the course of her travels strongly impacted her and inspired her interest in immigration law.