Adriana Lafaille joined the ACLU of Massachusetts as a legal fellow in October 2012 and became a staff attorney in November 2015. She has focused on immigration detention and immigrants' rights issues. The Massachusetts Bar Association selected her as the 2015 Access to Justice Rising Star, and Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly’s 2015 “Excellence in the Law” event recognized her as an “Up and Coming” lawyer.
Before joining the ACLU of Massachusetts, Adriana clerked for the Hon. Ralph D. Gants on the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, and for the Hon. Mark L. Wolf in the District of Massachusetts. Adriana graduated from Harvard Law School in 2010 and is a native speaker of Spanish and Portuguese.
Representative matters include:
- Argued Gordon v. Napolitano, a successful class action challenge to government's application of "mandatory" immigration detention. The ruling renders more than 100 Massachusetts detainees a year eligible for individual bond hearings.
- Submitted successful amicus brief in Castaneda v. Souza, a case challenging the government's application of the mandatory detention provision.
- Argued Lavrinenko v. Horgan, a First Circuit challenge to the adequacy of the procedures that justified our client's two-year detention during the pendency of his immigration case.
- Represented a detained noncitizen in Forero-Caicedo v. Tompkins, a successful petition for writ of habeus corpus challenging our client's unlawful mandatory detention, and resulting in his release from detention on minimum bond.
