Vera A. Weisz is a leading immigration attorney in Los Angeles, a widely respected expert on immigration law and a longtime national and local activist for immigrant rights and justice. She graduated from UCLA School of Law and is admitted to the California Bar.  One of Vera’s first job after law school was with Ira Kurzban, the internationally recognized expert on US Immigration Law.

 

Ms. Weisz specializes in complex immigration cases, removal defense, asylum, and family immigration petitions.

 

Ms. Weisz has worked extensively with refugees, first at Florida Rural Legal Services and then at the Haitian Refugee Center in Miami, and in Los Angeles at the National Center for Immigrant Rights, where she worked on class action lawsuits, including Orantes-Hernandez v. Holder, which established certain rights of Salvadoran nationals in immigration detention.

 

Another notable victory, Tampubolon v. Holder, decided in the U.S. Ninth Circuit in 2010, held that Christians in Indonesia are a “disfavored group,” and that fact must be taken into consideration in deciding a claim to fight deportation.

 

She has also been active in the immigrant rights advocacy arena, helping found organizations like CARECEN and Immigrants' List, a bipartisan political action committee supporting candidates for Congress who advocate for immigrant rights.

 

She has been honored by the National Lawyers Guild and other professional legal organizations and is working for the success of Court Watch, a watchdog program that monitors the immigration courts to make sure they guarantee immigrants due process.

 

Ms. Weisz was born in Colombia to Hungarian Jewish parents who had emigrated there after surviving the Holocaust during WWII. Her family moved to the United States when she was 11. Growing up, Ms. Weisz developed a strong pride in her roots but also learned to value and appreciate diversity.