Jessica Yañez Visiting Director of the Immigrant Rights Clinic

Phone: 540-458-4238

Email: jyanez@wlu.edu

Office: 333 Lewis Hall

About

Jessica Yañez is the Visiting Director of the Immigrant Rights Clinic, where she and student attorneys represent clients from the Lexington community and greater Shenandoah Valley in complex immigration matters. She also teaches an engaging survey Immigration Law course in which students learn about employment and family-based immigration law, humanitarian protections including asylum and refugee law, removal proceedings, naturalization, statelessness, cultural competency, and trauma-informed lawyering.

Professor Yañez is a North Carolina Board Certified Immigration Law Specialist. She managed her own practice for more than a decade before transitioning into academia. Her areas of expertise include removal defense, appeals before the Board of Immigration Appeals, waivers, consular processing, asylum, naturalization, U visas, T visas, and VAWA cases. Professor Yañez has a breadth of experience in international law, human rights work, and legal education. She has represented individuals from Afghanistan, Bosnia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Egypt, Syria, Rwanda, Nigeria, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Liberia, Russia, Ukraine, Venezuela, and many other countries where there have been grave human rights violations.

She graduated from UNC Greensboro with a B.A. in Spanish and earned her Juris Doctor from Elon University School of Law. She served as an Adjunct Professor of Immigration Law at Elon University School of Law from 2017 - 2023. She served as the AILA Carolinas Liaison for the Charlotte Immigration Court from 2017 - 2020. She is a frequent presenter at immigration law conferences. Her current research agenda includes birthright citizenship in the United States, climate change refugees, and tech solutions for immigration legal representation.