Welcome

Millicent Y. Clarke, Esq. has practiced Immigration Law for over 30 years. Upon graduation from law school, she was selected as a United States Department of Justice Honors Graduate. Ms. Clarke’s first legal position with the United States Justice Department was as a General Attorney for the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), now Department of Homeland Security, in Chicago. While serving in that capacity, she represented then INS, before the Immigration Court, served as a designated Naturalization Examiner, and defended the former INS in equal employment opportunity cases.

Ms. Clarke’s professional path subsequently led her to the United States Department of Justice, Office of Immigration Litigation, (OIL) in Washington, D.C., where she authored appellate briefs and argued cases before the various United States Courts of Appeals, nationwide. While at OIL, she was responsible for a number of precedent decisions involving the development of the appellate law pertaining to in absentia hearings.

In April of 1986, Ms. Clarke began working as a Special Assistant for the INS at the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, in Brooklyn. She was responsible for the prosecution and defense of all cases arising under the Immigration and Nationality Act, including the preparation of INS search warrants for presentation to the Federal Magistrate Judge, in that district, which is comprised of Staten Island, Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island. She successfully prosecuted and defended a number of high profile cases and cases of first impression in Immigration and International law. They included, inter alia, the first effort to denaturalize and deport a Jewish Nazi collaborator, as well as the defense of Bertrand Aristide, President of Haiti, who was at the time, in exile, in the United States. She defended, over a four-year period, a complex class action federal tort claim and Bivens action involving the detention of excludable aliens.

Ms. Clarke was appointed to the Immigration Bench by then U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, a position she declined, opting to enter private practice. Her practice now deals with the full range of immigration and consular law, including litigation in the Federal Courts. In 2009, she won two extensively and arduously fought removal cases before the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

Since entering private practice, she has auspiciously defended a number of cases which have garnered the attention of the national media including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, The New York Daily News, the San Jose Mercury News, and the Korean Times. She was also featured in New York Newsday’s Question and Answer Immigration column. In the year 2000, the Board of Immigration Appeals published one of her asylum cases, Matter of S- A-, as a precedent decision.

Ms. Clarke has spoken locally and nationally on immigration issues in a number of forums, such as, the Federal Courts Committee of the Nassau County Bar, and the National Bar Association. She has served as a panel member on the U.S. and Caribbean Issues Forum at the Congressional Black Caucus Legislative Conference in Washington, D.C., and on an Immigration panel sponsored by the Federal Bar Council. She regularly speaks to church and community groups. Additionally, Ms. Clarke was a regular speaker on Drive Time Radio, WPAT 930AM on Saturdays, where she addressed the full range of immigration issues. Since the beginning of 2011, Ms. Clarke has been working as an Adjunct Professor of law at the Immigration Clinic - Bread and Life: Bridge to Justice, at St. John’s University School of Law in Queens New York.