Chris Opila

Chris will work with the International Refugee Assistance Project’s (IRAP) Litigation Department to improve refugees’ access to resettlement to the United States by challenging unlawful U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) resettlement adjudication policies in federal court. His project will bring novel court challenges to USCIS policies and procedures that cause USCIS to deny almost one of every six refugees it considers for resettlement, and then scale to train pro bono partners to do the same.

A graduate of the University of Michigan Law School, Chris also holds a B.A. from Middlebury College and an Arabic language certificate from the CASA Program at the American University in Cairo. After law school, he clerked for the Hon. Gregory B. Wormuth on the U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico. Before law school, Chris worked in Cairo, Egypt and various cities and refugee camps in Eastern Africa as a legal advisor for IRAP and St. Andrew’s Refugee Services, a resettlement caseworker at the U.S. Resettlement Support Center for sub-Saharan Africa, and a resettlement officer with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

Fellowship type: Justice Catalyst

Organization: International Refugee Assistance Project

Project name: Building Legal Rights for Refugees in Resettlement Proceedings