Deepinder Singh Mayell to Lead Center for New Americans’ Education and Outreach Program

The Law School’s pioneering Center for New Americans (CNA) has announced that Deepinder Singh Mayell will become the director of its Education and Outreach Program in January. The program engages law students, along with the CNA’s law firm and nonprofit partners, in collaborative projects that teach noncitizens about their legal rights and train lawyers to provide high-quality pro bono representation to immigrants. Mayell will design new outreach initiatives in cooperation with faculty from the CNA’s three immigration clinics and expand the number of immigration-related externships offered to law students.

Mayell comes to the Law School from The Advocates for Human Rights in Minneapolis, where he was director of the Refugee & Immigrant Program. While at The Advocates, Mayell helped develop the proposal to create the Center for New Americans in 2013, and he has served on its advisory committee for the past three years. Mayell has also supported the CNA by serving as co-counsel in asylum litigation before the U.S. Supreme Court, as a co-organizer of numerous educational programs for law students and volunteer lawyers, and through his frequent appearances as a guest lecturer at our clinical seminars.

Prior to joining The Advocates, Mayell was a staff attorney with Merrimack Valley Legal Services in Massachusetts, where he represented poor victims of domestic violence in family, immigration, and housing proceedings. A graduate of Brooklyn Law School, Mayell’s past research work has included the constitutionality of prolonged detention of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, and labor conditions in apparel factories in Jakarta, Indonesia.