About the Author

Sophie Feal has been practicing immigration law for twenty years. She has been with the Immigration Project of the Erie County Bar Association Volunteer Lawyers Project (VLP), Inc. since 1999 except for three years when she was in private practice. Currently at VLP, she is the Supervising Immigration Attorney and concentrates her practice in the areas of deportation defense and asylum cases, with an emphasis on detained immigrants. At VLP, she is responsible for providing legal orientations to men detained by the Department of Homeland Security, and recruiting, training and mentoring pro bono attorneys to represent these individuals before the Immigration Court.


Ms. Feal was named by Upstate New York’s Super Lawyers magazine as one of the top attorneys in the region for 2009. In 2007 and 2008, Ms. Feal was elected by her peers in Western New York’s legal community to the Buffalo Law Journal's annual Who's Who in Law and in May 2008, she received the John R. Long Award from VIVE/La Casa, a Buffalo agency
that assists those seeking refuge in Canada, for her work with immigrants. While in private practice, Ms Feal received VLP's annual pro bono award for her volunteer work in the area of immigration law. She has served as the Chair of the Immigration Committee of the Erie County Bar Association, and is a member of the Bar Association's Human Rights and International Law Committees. She is also a member of the National Immigration Project.
Ms. Feal has published the following articles on immigration law:
• Still Hazy After all These Years: Persecution and the “Persecutor Bar” Standard (Bender’s Immigration Bulletin, April 15, 2009)

• Applicants for Admission or Arriving Aliens?: DHS Enforcement Tactics Against Refugees (Bender’s Immigration Bulletin, January 15, 2009)

• Expanding Borders, Diminishing Rights (New America Media, November 12, 2008)
• Shame of the Nation: The Treatment of Vulnerable Immigrants in Detention (Lexis/Nexis Expert Commentary, June 2008)
• On Matter of R-D- (Lexis/Nexis Expert Commentary, December 2007)
• Not Just a Matter of Time: The Concept of Abandonment of Permanent Residency Under Immigration and Nationality Law (Bender's Immigration Bulletin, May 2007), co-authored with Jill Apa, Esq.
• Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: The Future of Credibility Findings by Circuit Courts in Asylum Cases Under the REAL ID Act of 2005 (Bender's Immigration Bulletin, April 2006), co-authored with Jill Apa, Esq.
• Overwhelmed Circuit Courts Lashing Out at the BIA and Selected Immigration Judges: Is Streamlining to Blame? (Interpreter Releases, December 2005) with Gerald Seipp, Esq.
• Updated several chapters on asylum and removal proceedings for Matthew Bender's Lexis/Nexis legal treatise, Immigration Law and Procedure: Desk Edition
From 2003 to 2006, Ms. Feal was a regular columnist on immigration issues for the Daily Record and the Buffalo Law Journal, local legal publications.
Prior to returning to Buffalo, where she received her law degree in 1988, Ms. Feal was employed in immigration law at La Raza Centro Legal, Inc. in San Francisco, Catholic Charities Immigration Services in Washington, DC, and Farmworker Legal Services of New York in Rochester. Herself an immigrant, she was raised speaking French and Spanish.