People and Partners

Acosta joined Mitchell Hamline in 2016 as a clinical instructor, teaching the Health Law Clinic and overseeing the Medical-Legal Partnership between the law school and United Family Medicine, a Federally Qualified Healthcare (FQHC) facility in St. Paul. She previously practiced at Stinson Leonard Street as an attorney in the immigration law group, where she represented clients in employment-based immigration matters and supervised non-immigration attorneys on pro bono immigration matters for clients of the Deinard Clinic.

From 2004 to 2010, Acosta served as an immigration attorney for the Lutheran Social Services of New York (LSSNY) Immigration Legal Services Program, where she provided direct legal services to low-income immigrant populations in New York City. As part of her work with LSSNY, she also served as lead attorney in the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS) Special Registration Project, where she represented men from Muslim majority countries placed in removal proceedings after complying with the NSEERS Special Registration Program. Her work with the NSEERS Special Registration Project included litigating a legal and constitutional challenge to the NSEERS program before the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in Rajah v. Mukasey. She earned a J.D. from Columbia Law School and her undergraduate degree from the University of Minnesota.

Mahmoud Ahmed is the Community and Outreach Program Coordinator, James H. Binger Center for New Americans at the University of Minnesota Law School. In his current role, Mahmoud coordinates the Center's Programs and Outreach, working and collaborating with Law School faculty, staff and students as well as local, regional and national nonprofit and pro bono immigration legal service providers, including social workers, doctors not to mention attorneys.

After graduating from St Olaf College in 2020, Mahmoud worked in Refugee Resettlement having served as the Resettlement and Placement, as well as Housing, case manager at the International Institute of Minnesota. Mahmoud navigated and coordinated with a variety of local, federal, and international organizations - including the SSA, IOM, USCIS, and various branches of the MN Department of Human Services  - to provide Refugees with comprehensive services and resources needed to transition to and navigate life in the Twin Cities.

In 2019, Ahmed, as a member Sudanese activist cohort, co-founded the Sudanese American Collective to mobilize in support of the Sudanese Revolution The collective partnered with the office of Rep. Ilhan Omer on bill S.Res.188, which was passed to support the Sudanese Revolution and its people in realizing civil and sustainable democracy and self-governance.

Ahmed also worked with the University of Bahri’s Center for Peace and Development Studies. Where he collaborated with staff and faculty in conducting research on recurring armed conflict, public health crises and poverty, in addition to coordinating peace-building, and economic development projects and programs across Sudan. Ahmed worked on project implementation and managing communications between the center and partners institutes and organizations. Ahmed supported the groundwork underlying the many relationships established with policy makers, government agencies, and NGOs, such as the UNHCR and the Carter Center.

Professor Nadia Anguiano ’17 is an associate clinical professor of law and director of the Federal Immigration Litigation Clinic.

Professor Anguiano and her clinic students represent noncitizens in complex immigration cases before U.S. District Courts, U.S. Courts of Appeals, and the U.S. Supreme Court. Her work is particularly focused on challenges to the adverse immigration consequences of criminal convictions, challenges to unlawful immigration detention, and upholding due process rights in immigration proceedings. Professor Anguiano also teaches in the area of post-conviction relief.

Professor Anguiano serves on the Amicus Committee of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), which was awarded with the AILA Jack Wasserman Memorial Award for excellence in litigation in the field of immigration law in 2023. Professor Anguiano previously served on AILA’s Federal Court Litigation Section Steering Committee.

Before joining the faculty in September 2019, Professor Anguiano served as a law clerk for Judge Jane Kelly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit and Judge Susan Richard Nelson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota. She worked as a mechanical engineer for six years before attending law school.

Sarah Brenes is Executive Director of the Binger Center for New Americans at the University of Minnesota Law School. She is a specialist in immigration public interest law practice with a focus on holistic client services and interprofessional collaboration.  

Brenes provides leadership and management for the Center’s operations and leads strategic planning for the Center’s collaborative model. She works closely with the Center’s faculty, staff, law firm and non-profit partners to develop and implement the Center’s mission to expand legal services for noncitizens, pursue litigation to improve immigration laws, and support noncitizens in the region through education and community outreach. Brenes directs the Center’s Education and Outreach Program, and is a Lecturer in Law, teaching courses including the Rural Access Immigration Clinic.

Prior to joining Minnesota Law, Brenes spent over a decade practicing immigration law at The Advocates for Human Rights. She worked with clients, pro bono attorneys and colleagues on immigration matters that involve human rights violations, including asylum, human trafficking, immigration detention and unaccompanied minors.  Alongside MN Law grads colleagues, including Michele Garnett McKenzie ‘95, Brenes managed the growth and sustainability of the Refugee & Immigrant Program. The program has hosted and hired several MN Law grads including Lindsey Greising ‘12, John Bruning ‘17, and Zack Albun ‘16, and other UMN graduates including Tom Bird ‘11, Kristin Gill ‘21, and Maryam Ahmed ‘19. 

Brenes mentored Minnesota Law Students including Robina Public Interest Scholars, Cooper Fellows through the Human Rights Center, LLM students who became Humphrey Fellows, Humphrey Fellows who became staff, UMN undergraduate interns and graduates who joined The Advocates.  Work with alums has included projects to provide legal services to noncitizen youth who survived human trafficking, pilot asylum pro se clinics in Greater Minnesota and establish a legal clinic consortium for Afghans evacuated from Afghanistan who were resettled in Minnesota.  Brenes worked closely with MN Law faculty including Steve Meili, whose clinic receives referrals for asylum cases from The Advocates and Linus Chan, who collaborates with The Advocates to manage and adapt the MN Detention Project, Bond Project and Immigration Court Observation Project.

Brenes has a long history of working closely with Binger Center Institutional partners.  While at The Advocates, Brenes worked closely with Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid and Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota on joint grants to represent immigrants in detention and others in removal proceedings. She also supported hundreds of pro bono attorneys from firms including Robins Kaplan LLP, Dorsey & Whitney LLP and Faegre Drinker, the three law firm partners of the Binger Center.

Brenes’ legal training and formation was rooted in interprofessional clinical education while studying and teaching at the University of St. Thomas School of Law and its Interprofessional Center for Counseling and Legal Services. She received the John R. Roach Fellowship in recognition of her commitment to Public Interest Law.  Black letter law is an important seed for budding lawyers, but in order to successfully practice in public interest immigration law, this base knowledge must be fed with skills to navigate the myriad of pressures weighing on low-income noncitizens. Collaborating with professionals with expertise in mental health and other fields enhances legal problem solving and strengthens holistic client services. Brenes incorporates this philosophy in her work with the Center’s students and partners in order to fulfill the Center’s core mission to lighten the legal load noncitizens are forced to carry in an unwelcoming legal system and often hostile political environment in which we all need them to thrive.

Brenes’ connections to UMN extend beyond her professional capacity.  Her brother is a graduate of the College of Science and Engineering.  Her mother worked as a nurse in the UMN Neurology Dept and later at Boynton Health Center for over 35 years.  

Professor Stephen Meili writes and teaches about the rights of noncitizens, particularly those seeking asylum. His work often takes a comparative approach: His recent book, published in 2022 by Oxford University Press, is a study of the constitutionalization of human rights law and its impact on asylum-seekers in Colombia, Mexico, South Africa, Uganda and the United States. His scholarship has also analyzed the effectiveness of human rights treaties in protecting asylum-seekers in Canada, Ecuador, Mexico, the U. and the European Union.

His other recent publications include an analysis of efforts by the Trump Administration to limit access to asylum in the United States, a comparative study of the detention of asylum-seekers in the U.S. and the UK, and the right not to hold a political opinion as the basis for asylum. His research has been funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, the Robina Foundation, and the University of Minnesota’s Strategic Partnerships Program.

Meili has taught international refugee law and been an Academic Visitor at Oxford University. He has also taught at four law schools in Medellin, Colombia, and at Uppsala University in Sweden. At the University of Minnesota he teaches Immigration Law and International Refugee and Asylum Law.

Meili also serves as Co-Director of the Law School’s Immigration and Human Rights Clinic, where students represent asylum-seekers and trafficking survivors in various immigration and appellate court proceedings. Over the past few years, the I&HR Clinic has obtained asylum or other forms of protection for applicants from Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Eritrea, Ethiopia, The Gambia, Guinea, Honduras, Iran, Liberia, Mexico, Nigeria, Syria, Sudan, Turkmenistan, and Zimbabwe. He has also supervised outreach projects in the Twin Cities immigrant community.

Meili was awarded the Law School’s Stanley V. Kinyon Clinical Teacher of the Year Award in 2011, held the Vaughn G. Papke Clinical Professorship in Law from 2012 to 2014, and was the James H. Binger Professor in Clinical Law from 2019 through April 2022.

Prior to coming to Minnesota, Meili was Director of the Consumer Law Litigation Clinic at the University of Wisconsin Law School. Before entering academia, he was a partner in a plaintiffs’-side labor and employment law firm in Hartford, Connecticut.

Kgomotso Magagula is the Administrative Coordinator for the James H. Binger Center for New Americans at the University of Minnesota Law School. In her current role she coordinates administrative tasks that include client casework, meeting planning and clinical program support for the BCNA’s law clinics.

Previously, through the Svoboda Legal Scholars Program at St. Olaf College, Kgomotso worked as a Legal Intern for The Advocates for Human Rights under the International Justice Program. Kgomotso’s time at The Advocates involved observing human rights missions and workings, and conducting research on human rights law and implementation of international human rights standards to compile country and region specific information on rule of law issues. 

Kgomotso is a 2021 St. Olaf graduate where she served as a Steen Fellow conducting ethnographic research on legal pluralism and its impacts on women in the Kingdom of Eswatini. After graduating from St. Olaf College Kgomotso worked in the financial technology and services industry as a Project Coordinator managing SaaS onboarding, validation and adoption for wealth management firms.

In addition, Kgomotso has a wide range of volunteer interests. She serves as a Director of Research for American Model United Nations, a non-profit organization that provides college students with an annual educational simulation of the United Nations. She also volunteers with local musicians, coordinating merchandise sales and digital marketing for various country-wide tour/show dates.

Kimberly Medina '20 is an immigration litigation and advocacy fellow in the Federal Immigration Litigation Clinic. Prior to joining Minnesota Law, she was a Practitioner-in-Residence at Seton Hall University School of Law, where she represented indigent New Jerseyans in removal proceedings through the state-funded Detention and Deportation Defense Initiative. At Seton Hall, Medina's practice focused on providing representation to detained individuals caught at the intersection of criminal and immigration law.

Medina earned her B.A. from the University of South Carolina and her J.D. from the University of Minnesota Law School, where she was a student attorney and student director at the Detainee Rights Clinic. Kimberly is proudly the daughter of immigrants and a first-generation student of higher education.

Kelly Shanahan is a clinical fellow with the Immigration and Human Rights Clinic, James H. Binger Center for New Americans at the University of Minnesota Law School. Prior to joining the BCNA, Kelly was an asylum attorney with the Center for Immigrant and Refugee Advancement in Nebraska, where she focused on affirmative and defensive asylum practice, unaccompanied minor children cases, and removal defense.

Kelly earned her B.A. from the University of Minnesota, where she graduated with high distinction and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. Kelly is also a graduate of the University of Nebraska College of Law, where she earned her J.D. in 2023 with highest distinction and was admitted to the Order of the Coif for her academic excellence.