Hot Topics in District Court Litigation

Zachary M. Nightingale practices immigration law in San Francisco, California. A partner at Van Der Hout, LLP, his immigration practice since 1996 focuses on deportation defense and litigation in immigration and federal courts. He received his J.D. from Stanford Law School, following an M.S. (Stanford, mathematics) and A.B. (U.C. Berkeley, mathematics) and is certified by the State Bar of California as an expert in immigration law. Mr. Nightingale was honored with AILA’s 2003 Jack Wasserman Memorial Award for excellence in litigation and was the 2014 NIP/NLG member honoree for outstanding contributions to the cause of immigrant justice.

Holly Cooper is the Co-Director of the Immigration Law Clinic at UC Davis School of Law and specializes in federal litigation for immigration detainees and the immigration consequences of criminal convictions.

Jeffrey A. Devore received his B.S. in Computer Science from Bowling Green State University and his J.D. from the Western Michigan University Cooley Law School. He is board certified in Immigration and Nationality law by The Florida Bar, AV rated by Martindale-Hubbell, and a Florida Super Lawyer. Mr. Devore has litigated extensively against the Departments of State, Justice and Homeland Security, and has written widely on U.S. immigration and naturalization matters. He is admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second, Fifth, Ninth, and Eleventh Circuits, and the U.S. District Courts for the Middle and Southern Districts of Florida, the Northern District of Texas, the District of Colorado, and the Western District of Tennessee. He is a past chair of AILA’s South Florida and Latin America and Caribbean chapters and a former member of AILA’s Board of Governors.

W. John Yahya Vandenberg is a partner at Hogan & Vandenberg in Philadelphia.  He is a past Chair of the AILA Philadelphia Chapter.  John has spoken and written on relief for CARRP'd clients, Advanced TPS issues, Lozada Best Practices, Difficult Family-based Adjustments, VAWA for men, and Removal Proceedings in a Detained Setting.  He served as the Summer Adjunct at the Villanova Clinic for Asylum, Refugees, and Emigrant Services ("CARES") and previously was an Adjunct Lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania Transnational Legal Clinic.  He is the author of the blog Immigration Law Monitor (https://immigrationlawmonitor.wordpress.com/).  In 2012, the AILA Philadelphia Chapter awarded John the first Matthew Baxter Mentorship Award.  He earned his J.D. from the Villanova University School of Law, and holds a BA in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Texas at Austin.