Symposium Panelists

Kit Johnson is the Hugh Roff Professor of Law and Thomas P. Hester Presidential Professor at the University of Oklahoma College of Law. Professor Johnson’s research has, broadly speaking, focused on the intersection of immigration law and U.S. business interests as well as issues related to the intersection of criminal law and immigration enforcement. She is the author of two open-access casebooks on immigration and crimmigration and is a co-editor and regular blogger for the ImmigrationProf Blog.

Annie Bright is a Visiting Assistant Professor at St. Mary’s University School of Law where she teaches Constitutional Criminal Procedure and Constitutional Law. Her scholarship focuses on immigration law and policy, often at its intersection with constitutional law. Prior to joining St. Mary’s, Professor Bright worked in private practice with De Mott, Curtright and Armendáriz, where she represented both detained and non-detained immigrants in immigration proceedings.

Matthew Boaz is an Asst. Professor of Law at the University of Kentucky J. David Rosenberg College of Law. He was previously the Director of the Immigrant Rights Clinic at Washington & Lee University School of Law from 2019-2024. Prior to teaching, Boaz was a Senior Detention Attorney with the Immigrant Rights Project of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) in Newark, NJ, where he represented individuals held in immigration detention centers while in removal proceedings.

Paul Wickham Schmidt is a retired U.S. Immigration Judge, retired adjunct law professor at Georgetown Law, former Chairman, Board of Immigration Appeals, former Deputy General Counsel and Acting General Counsel, “Legacy” Immigration & Naturalization Service, former partner at two major law firms, and a current member of the Round Table of Former Immigration Judges. 

Elizabeth Jordan is a visiting professor and director of the University of Denver Sturm College of Law’s Immigration Law & Policy Clinic, where she supervises law students representing people in ICE custody and in removal proceedings in Aurora, Colorado. Her prior work, at the Civil Rights Education and Enforcement Center (CREEC) in Denver, included serving as co-lead counsel in Fraihat v. ICE, a systemwide class action lawsuit that led to the release of thousands of detained immigrants with elevated risk factors for COVID-19. Before joining CREEC, Prof. Jordan was a staff attorney at The Door’s Legal Services Center in New York City and a Fellow with the Capital Appeals Project in Louisiana.

Jonathan D. Ross is the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas, the top-ranking federal law enforcement official in the district. After graduating from William H. Bowen School of Law, his career as a prosecutor included serving as a deputy prosecuting attorney for the 6th Judicial District Prosecuting Attorney’s Office in Little Rock, an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Arkansas, and an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Texas.

Matthew Vogel is a Supervising Attorney at the National Immigration Project (NIPLNG), where he works on litigation, advocacy, and training regarding immigration enforcement and detention as well as issues at the intersection of criminal law and immigration law. Matt joined NIPNLG from the Orleans Public Defenders (OPD) in New Orleans, where for several years as a staff attorney, he built OPD’s immigration practice, providing immigration consequences advising and training on the immigration consequences of criminal legal system involvement. Matt also worked on OPD’s death penalty and juvenile life without parole defense teams and carried a docket of upper-level felonies and misdemeanors.