Julia M. Ponce-Vega

Prior to joining CMS, she was Director of Immigrant Services at Mercy Center in the South Bronx where she represented immigrants and new Americans before USCIS and EOIR. Julia is an experienced immigration attorney, she has successfully represented asylum seekers, domestic violence survivors, and unaccompanied children, provided legal orientations for custodians of unaccompanied minors, and delivered direct legal services to immigrants seeking immigration benefits while working with Catholic Charities Community Services. She has over two decades of experience working in public service and on issues affecting and of interest to immigrant communities, advocating for worker rights internationally and nationally, as well as, delivering training and dispute resolution services. Her commitment to assisting immigrants comes from her own immigrant experience where she fled El Salvador with her family at eleven years old and immigrated to the United States to escape the horrors of the Salvadoran civil war. She has a B.A. in Political Science and International Development from William Smith College and obtained her J.D. from the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University, where she won her first asylum case while working at the Asylum Clinic, represented people charged with misdemeanors in Nassau County District Court, clerked for the National Labor Relations Board, and labor firm Colleran, O’Hara and Mills. Julia is skilled at transcending cultural differences through communication, providing direct legal services to low-income immigrants and underserved communities of color, women, and workers by way of community lawyering. Julia is admitted to practice law in New York.