Jenna K. Gilbert is an associate attorney with Jacobson & Han LLP. Ms. Gilbert specializes in removal defense, including asylum, cancellation of removal, adjustment of status, and criminal waivers, as well as relief for individuals who have been the victim of criminal activity and domestic violence.
Before joining Jacobson & Han LLP, Ms. Gilbert was chosen as one of four recipients for the Loyola Law School Post-Graduate Fellowship in Public Interest Law. These fellowships are designed to provide legal services to underrepresented groups that have traditionally lacked full access to legal services, create new public interest law positions, and encourage and develop a diverse and qualified group of future public interest lawyers and leaders to ensure the future of public interest law. The fellowship committee awards funding to those applicants with extraordinary independent project proposals.
As a law fellow, Ms. Gilbert was given funding to work at Asylum Access Ecuador, non-governmental organization in Quito, Ecuador, where she lived and worked for one year. There, she provided a variety of legal services, including asylum applications and appeals, to the refugee community. She used her fellowship as an opportunity to create and lead a prison advocacy project, in which she provided detained migrants with Know Your Rights presentations, advised them of their rights and potential refugee claims, and ensured their protection under the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1967 Optional Protocol. Ms. Gilbert frequently represented clients in deportation proceedings and also had the opportunity to argue a case in Ecuador’s highest court, the Corte Constitucional. Ms. Gilbert successfully represented clients in a wide variety of cases, including securing release from jail after submitting habeas corpus petitions on their behalf, winning back wages for clients who had been denied basic guarantees in the labor code, and other civil rights cases involving access to justice and anti-discrimination on behalf of refugees. Ms. Gilbert also worked in conjunction with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to provide resettlement to refugees.
Ms. Gilbert received her Bachelor of Arts degree in International Relations and Spanish from the University of San Diego. She graduated cum laude in the Honor’s Program after writing her thesis entitled “The Social Costs of U.S. Immigration Policy on Mexican Migration.” Ms. Gilbert also studied Spanish and International Relations at the Instituto Internacional in Madrid, Spain, and the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Occidente (“ITESO”) in Guadalajara, Mexico. While living in Madrid, Spain, Ms. Gilbert worked with Human Rights Watch.
Ms. Gilbert subsequently received her Juris Doctor degree from Loyola Law School, Los Angeles, where she participated in the Immigrant Justice Practicum, Inter-American Court of Human Rights Moot Court Competition, and was President of the International Law Society. While in law school, she studied Human Rights and Environmental Law at the University for Peace (“Universidad para la Paz”), the only degree-giving institution of the United Nations, in Costa Rica.
During law school, Ms. Gilbert gained exceptional experience in immigration law and advocacy, working with immigrant rights organizations and private immigration law firms. She has represented clients with claims to a variety of forms of immigration relief, including U-Visa, VAWA, asylum, withholding of removal, Convention Against Torture, and Special Immigrant Juvenile Status.
Ms. Gilbert was admitted to the California State Bar in 2011. She has worked in Los Angeles, Washington D.C., and Madrid, Spain, and Quito, Ecuador. She has traveled extensively thought Mexico, Central America, South America, and Europe. She is fluent in Spanish.
