Elaina Sophia Jung Jee Vermeulen

Elaina Sophia Jung Here Vermeulen is an aspiring immigration attorney. She will not solely provide direct legal services to immigrants detained in ICE custody, she will embrace her clients’ leadership to dismantle the systems that harm them. She is an immigrant who has never been detained, and is not at risk of deportation after naturalization, so she does not know the conditions of confinement firsthand nor the fear of deportation. However, she is committed to leveraging her privilege so that criminalized immigrants with this lived knowledge get a seat at the table where organizing, legal and policy decisions are made. She wants to be an immigration attorney capable of effecting systemic change with survivors of the criminal and immigration legal system. She is a 1L at UCLA School of Law in the Epstein Program in Public Interest Law and Policy.