Kathrine Russell is a Team Leader in the Immigrant Youth & Communities Project at Brooklyn Defender Services. Ms. Russell joined BDS in July 2014 to lead BDS’s Immigrant Youth Project, now the Immigrant Youth and Communities Project. 

BDS’s Immigrant Youth and Communities Project represents Brooklyn residents seeking a wide range of immigration benefits such as citizenship, lawful permanent residence, Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, special trafficking and victims’ visas, VAWA, TPS, and DACA. Ms. Russell also represents clients in their defense against deportation in non-detained deportation proceedings.

Prior to joining BDS, Ms. Russell spent two years as Pro Bono Coordinating Attorney at the New York office of Kids in Need of Defense (KIND), where she trained and mentored hundreds of attorneys working on cases of children and young people in immigration removal proceedings. Prior to KIND, Ms. Russell spent three years on the U.S.-Mexico border as a children’s attorney at the South Texas Pro Bono Asylum Representation Project (ProBAR) in Harlingen, TX, where she represented detained and non-detained children and young people in immigration court, applications to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and state court dependency proceedings.

Ms. Russell received her J.D. from the University of Texas School of Law in 2008; after law school, she was an associate at Latham & Watkins in New York, where she worked on a variety of pro bono matters, including several cases of unaccompanied children.

During law school, Ms. Russell was a summer associate at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, a law clerk at Texas Community Building with Attorney Resources (Texas C-BAR), and an intake specialist at Texas RioGrande Legal Aid. Ms. Russell received her B.A. in Latin American Studies from Columbia University in 2005.