8/07/03—After a nationwide search and the interview of 8 outstanding finalists, Boston College Law School has hired a new Catholic Legal Immigration Network Fellow to work with Law School students in the BC Law Immigration clinical program, Alexandra Dufresne.

“We are absolutely thrilled to have her here,” said Professor Dan Kanstroom, director of the program. “I am certain that she will be an outstanding addition to our program, a great mentor for our students, and a wonderful colleague for us all.”

Alexandra Dufresne is a 1996 graduate of Yale University, where she received a B.A. with Distinction in History, writing her senior thesis on "The Moral Debate over American War Crimes in Vietnam." She then attended the University of Chicago Law School, receiving a J.D. with Honors in 1999. She was employed by Latham & Watkins where, among other things, she won U.S. permanent residence for a Guatemalan woman who fled due to threats to her life arising out of her leadership role in an organization of relatives of "disappeared" persons. Alexandra then clerked for the Honorable Martha Craig Daughtrey, of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, and has worked as a litigation associate at Hale & Dorr for the past year. She is fluent in Spanish, having lived in Mexico where she taught literacy and worked on development projects with a Mexican NGO.

She will begin her work officially in late August in the Immigration program office in the Curtin Center for Public Interest Law, but is already studying immigration law in the library and attending hearings with the Immigration program team.