Carmen E. Atkins represents clients in all areas of immigration law, including removal proceedings before the Immigration Court. She also has extensive experience with family-based petitions, applications for residency, asylum applications, and applications for citizenship. Ms. Atkins also represents clients with employment and investment-based immigration cases.
Ms. Atkins is deeply committed to advancing immigrants’ rights. In practice, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees recognized her work with the 2016 1st and 2nd Place Judgment Award, awarded to the most progressive immigrants’ rights judgments in the American continents, for her constitutional actions against the State of Ecuador, which forced Ecuador to restore international refugee law into their domestic law.
Ms. Atkins earned her Juris Doctor from University of California at Berkeley where she was awarded the Brian M. Sax prize for excellence in clinical advocacy, given to the student with the most outstanding performance among the law school’s clinics. Ms. Atkins was recognized for her tireless work before the Inter-American Human Rights System, which held the State of Guatemala accountable for over 100 victims of forced disappearance in the context of Jose Miguel Gudiel Alvarez et al. vs. Guatemala. Prior to that, Ms. Atkins earned her Bachelor’s of Science Degree at Cornell University, where she was consistently on the Dean’s List and was accepted to the Ye Hosts Honor Society, composed of Cornell Hotel School students selected from the top ten percent of their class.
Ms. Atkins is Peruvian and Nicaraguan and is fluent in Spanish and English. She also speaks Italian, French, and Portuguese.
English
Spanish
Haitian Creole