Geoffrey Heeren

Geoffrey Heeren is a Senior Attorney with the Immigration Project of the Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago (LAF).  At LAF, Geoffrey handles a wide variety of immigration cases, ranging from applications for immigration benefits on behalf of victims of abuse and trafficking to cases in the federal courts of appeal on behalf of asylum seekers. Geoffrey’s immigrant clients are the victims of torture, human trafficking, gender-related crimes, and domestic violence, and are often physically or mentally ill. Some of Geoffrey’s recent federal litigation has established novel precedent in the Seventh Circuit concerning the constitutional rights of immigrants held in prolonged immigration detention. Geoffrey is an active member of the American Immigration Lawyers’ Association (AILA), for which he moderates a series of local roundtables concerning current topics in immigration litigation.  Aside from LAF, Geoffrey has handled criminal appeals as an Assistant Defender at the Office of the State Appellate Defender and civil rights litigation as a staff attorney at the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law.  He graduated from New York University School of Law and received his undergraduate degree from the University of Chicago.