Attorney Profile:
Marguerite is a graduate of Columbia Law School in New York, where she obtained her Juris Doctor as well as a Certificate in International and Foreign Law. While at Columbia, Marguerite received the distinction of being named a Stone Scholar as well as a Columbia Law School Public Service Fellow. She received two Public Interest Law Foundation Fellowships and an award of Recogn
ition for more than 75 hours of pro bono work. Marguerite is also a graduate of Duke University where she completed the degrees of political science and French, and graduated magna cm laude. As an attorney, Marguerite's private practice focuses on immigration law, including family services, residency and citizenship, consular processing, court representation, and humanitarian relief, such as U visas (for crime victims), political asylum, NACARA (Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act), Special Immigrant Juvenile, and VAWA (Violence Against Women) petitions. Marguerite has successfully represented clients from more than 50 countries from all over the world, including Canada, Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Russia, Denmark, United Kingdom, Spain, France, Italy, Slovakia, Iraq, Serbia and Montenegro, Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast, Guinée-Conakry, Democratic Republic of Congo, Togo, Cameroon, Uganda, Algeria, Kenya, Rwanda, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia and China. Marguerite's legal experience includes her work as a detention attorney for the Education and Representation Project, representing detained asylum seekers at the Elizabeth Detention Center in New Jersey. She was also a detainee attorney pursuant to an Office of Refugee Resettlement Survivors of Torture Grant. Additionally, Marguerite was the VAWA Attorney and NACARA and Central American Program Supervisor for the American Friends Service Committee. Marguerite worked at the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg, the Supreme Court of the European Union, pursuant to the US Embassy's Dean Acheson stage program. She completed a two-year clerkship at the United States Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York. Marguerite is admitted to the New York Bar and the Bar of the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Marguerite has also provided consulting services to Immigration Law Firms in Los Angeles, and provides translation and interpretation for refugees in New York City. Marguerite is fluent in English, French, and Spanish, is proficient in Portuguese. Marguerite is also an accomplished musician. She is a pianist and has sung with the Downtown Chorus in Tribeca at Lincoln Center with the New York City Chamber Orchestra and the 9/11 Memorial Ceremony for First Responders. Along with her daughter, she has performed with the choirs in residence at Carnegie Hall, and with the Continuo Arts Foundation at the International Festival of the Aegean in Ermoupolis, Greece and the Festival Internazionale di Musica e Arte Sacra in Vatican City & Rome. Marguerite serves on the Board of Directors for The Children of Lavié, a nonprofit organization providing tuition assistance to school children in West Africa.
