Tess Hellgren

Tess Hellgren is a Catalyst Fellow with Innovation Law Lab, where she works on legal resources and impact litigation that aim to enhance innovative models of massive collaborative representation and challenge systemic injustices in immigration court adjudication.

Since beginning her Fellowship in March 2019, she has co-authored a joint policy report from Law Lab and the Southern Poverty Law Center, The Attorney General’s Judges: How the U.S. Immigration Courts Became a Deportation Tool. Tess graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in February 2019, where she represented asylum seekers through the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinic and co-directed the student-run Removal Defense Project. During her law school summers, Tess volunteered with the CARA Pro Bono Project in Dilley, Texas; was a legal intern at the Santa Fe Dreamers Project in New Mexico; and worked as a summer law clerk for Immigrant Law Group PC in Portland, Oregon. Tess holds an M.Sc. in Migration Studies from the University of Oxford and an A.B. summa cum laude from Harvard University. She is a member of the Oregon State Bar.

Fellowship type: Justice Catalyst

Organization: Innovation Law Lab

Project name: Defending the Rights of Noncitizens in Hostile Immigration Jurisdictions