Jaclyn Kelley-Widmer

Jaclyn Kelley-Widmer founded and directs Cornell’s first 1L clinic, the Immigration Law & Advocacy Clinic (ILAC). She also teaches first-year Lawyering, advanced Immigration Clinic, and seminars relating to migration and the law. She is the Faculty Director of Path2Papers, a pro bono project affiliated with ILAC that helps DACA recipients pursue work visas and other pathways to lawful permanent residency. She received her J.D. from the University of Michigan School of Law and a B.A. in writing and Spanish from Ithaca College.

Professor Kelley-Widmer’s legal expertise is in immigration, especially asylum law and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). Her practice experience also includes representing clients in cases for parole, naturalization, special immigrant juvenile status, and visas for survivors of human trafficking and domestic violence. At Cornell, she leads students in providing legal services to immigrants in the Cornell community and nationally. She engages law students in advocacy for those held in immigration detention centers such as in New York, Louisiana, and Texas.

Professor Kelley-Widmer is a regular contributor to the scholarly and public conversation in immigration law. Her scholarship often focuses on themes of clinical pedagogy and immigration at the intersection of administrative or criminal law. Her pieces have appeared in journals including the Brooklyn Law Review, Clinical Law Review, Oregon Law Review, San Francisco Law Review, Georgetown Immigration Law Journal, Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy, and the Michigan Journal of Race and Law. She has published shorter pieces on emerging immigration issues in the Washington Post and Immigration Law Advisor. Her work has been featured on NPR, in the Cornell Daily Sun, and in other media.

Previously, she was an Equal Justice Works fellow at La Raza Centro Legal in San Francisco, where she focused on representing immigrant youth and their families in their applications for immigration relief. She also taught legal writing at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law and clerked at the San Francisco Immigration Court through the Department of Justice Honors Program.

Professor Kelley-Widmer is a member of the California Bar, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, and the Finger Lakes Women’s Bar Association. She is an advisory board member for the local non-profit Ithaca Welcomes Refugees. She is fluent in Spanish.