Class Notes

So the two talked to family members, and immigration officers who were kind enough to respond. Certainly, they weren’t the only ones: there was a large-scale pro-bono effort involving nearly two-dozen attorneys taking shifts at O’Hare’s terminal five.

But Khalaf and Abuzir have made a name for themselves in helping those from Arabic-speaking countries. Chicago has one of the largest Palestinian communities in the U.S., and Khalaf began her practice decades ago as a groundbreaker: a female, Muslim, Arabic speaker in a private, community-based practice.

A rarity, if not a singularity.

“There were a handful of attorneys in general, all male, who had experience in the culture and were sensitive to the religion,” Khalaf says.

But as for Muslim women—community-based attorneys, as opposed to corporate attorneys—Khalaf says she was the only one she knew of when she started her firm in 1993, a few years after finishing law school. At Chicago-Kent College of Law, she remembers being one of only two female Arab Muslim students attending at the time.

Former client Tamara Haddad agrees: “There were no community-based Arab-American female attorneys who were experienced in immigration. I looked. She was the only one. She was the only Arab woman who had the ability to know what I was going through.

“We are not comfortable expressing our problems to men we are not related to,” Haddad explains. “It was very important for me to feel comfortable with my attorney. This woman is a blessing. A malak,” she adds, using the Arabic word for angel.

Says Khalaf, “There’s a sense of comfort when a Muslim woman communicates with another Muslim woman who looks, speaks, and feels like her. I was the mirror image of many of these women who were heads of households, who were alone in the United States, whose husbands didn’t accompany them. So it was new, it was refreshing.”

Still, many clients, coming from a largely patriarchal community, questioned her out of habit.

“‘Are you really a lawyer, and can I see your degree? Maybe I can hire someone else to help you.’ I dealt with a lot of that,” Khalaf says. “The men had choices. If they didn’t like or weren’t comfortable with me, they could go elsewhere.

“Many of the women could not.”

Though she was born in Jerusalem, Khalaf’s family immigrated to the U.S. when she was six months old. She moved to Ramallah, Palestine, when she was 12 after her father got a job working for an oil company in Abu Dhabi.

Khalaf and Abuzir met through family: Khalaf went to a high school in Ramallah with Abuzir’s sister.

Abuzir, on the other hand, was born in Chicago; his father, who is from Palestine, owned a convenience store on the South Side. Neither his father nor his mother, who is from Colombia, had high school degrees, so they relied on Abuzir and his brother to review contracts and documents, even at an early age.

“I saw that, in helping my father and many of his friends in similar situations, there was a need for representation,” Abuzir says.

Abuzir clerked for Khalaf while attending Chicago-Kent, then started as an associate after he graduated in 1999.

Abuzir, who works out of the firm’s downtown Chicago office, believes the emotional reward he gets from his job is unlike anything he’d get from another field.

“Really, you see the deep impact it has on individuals, winning benefits or getting residency, how it completely changes their futures,” Abuzir says. “The feeling I get whenever someone wins a case and the joy they have is hard to describe.”

Abuzir points to a recent case, that of 43-year-old Haitham Hamad Awad Amli, who had been stranded on docket after docket—delay after delay—for 10 years.

A Palestinian who had applied for asylum in 2011, he continued to await resolution of his case for years, with judges retiring, their loads transfered.

“Every day before we had a court date, I went to buy a suit. I swear I have like 10 or 12 suits,” says Amli. “Every time, just one day before the court hearing, sometimes hours, they delayed the date for a year.”

And with his case pending, there was no way for Amli to return to Palestine to see his family, or bring them to the U.S.

“Ten years. My daughter was four when I left. She’s 14 now,” Amli says. Within the past year, one of his sons was hit and killed by a car. Every day, morning and night, he’d talk to his family on the WhatsApp messenger and share what he could.

Abuzir took the case in 2017. Finally, in 2019, Amli received a hearing and his asylum was granted. Last August, his family— their visas finally approved—was able to join him.

“Omar is honest,” Amli says, a compliment he doesn’t offer lightly after his experiences. “When we won I wanted to give him a gift, some money [beyond the attorney fees]. He wouldn’t take it; he put it back in my hand and said, ‘That’s not mine; that’s yours, for you, your wife, your kids. Just save it, keep it.’”

“Money’s money,” Abuzir says.

“But no amount of money in the world can replace reunifying a family,” agrees Khalaf.

On the other hand, if cases go awry, “I still carry this sense of guilt, that I was the reason they weren’t able to stay in the U.S. I haven’t been able to separate myself, Vivian the person, from Vivian the attorney,” she adds.

“I still go home and stay awake. Thinking about these cases.”

The two have tackled much larger cases. Back in 2020, when U.S. citizens were denied their federal stimulus checks for filing a joint tax return with a spouse who only had an Individual Taxpayer Identification number (as opposed to a Social Security number), the pair, along with two other attorneys, brought a class-action suit against the government in federal district court.

“It seemed like it was a clear violation of due process,” Khalaf says. “Eventually it became moot; we believe because of these lawsuits, there was enough pressure put on our congressional representatives to do the right thing.”

The second round of stimulus checks went out to such families, who also received the first payments retroactively.

More recently, the pair remains involved in a joint effort by the Arab American Bar Association and the South Asian Bar Association, who have teamed up to get families out of Afghanistan.

“Prior to this, I was never involved in such an effort. It didn’t happen during the war in Iraq,” Khalaf says. “Social media has affected everything from A to Z insofar as getting people involved in such issues.”

The firm has since grown significantly since it began, with offices in Palos Hills, Illinois, downtown Chicago, and Ramallah. But back when Khalaf started out, she sometimes didn’t get paid, or had to barter goods for services. One client paid her with a Persian rug.

“Because they couldn’t afford it. But that was OK. If that happened at a firm downtown, they’d show them the door and escort them to the elevator,” she says.

“But I saw the need. I filled a void.”

Give Me Your Masses (or Not)

When I was a summer associate in New York in the 1990s, the highlight of the firm’s social activities was a boat trip along the Hudson River. The trip culminated at the Statue of Liberty at twilight while speakers blasted Neil Diamond’s “America.” I wept imagining my grandparents coming through Ellis Island in the 1920s fleeing anti-Semitism in Russia. I remembered those in my family who did not immigrate and were ultimately killed by Nazi forces. Suddenly, the music stopped and a recorded voice recited Emma Lazarus’s poem—“Mother of exiles…Give me your tired…your poor.” In my family, that poem was our own pledge of allegiance. This is one side of the American coin—America as a land of immigrants, America ready to give refuge. This understanding of what the United States is has a long history. But equally strong is a history of xenophobia, in which the American gates to immigration were closed to many, often based on nationality and race.

Today’s most recent immigration crisis involves the closing of the southern land borders, including for people seeking asylum. Our immigration policy has long been responsible for the separation of families and even the death of those seeking to migrate to the U.S. At this moment, we must once again determine whether we are the country of the ideas that Emma Lazarus represents or a country of eugenicist immigration.

Just some examples of racist policies and practices include the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, which prohibited the immigration of Chinese laborers. Following World War I, Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1917, which barred multiple categories of people, including those from a vast number of Asian countries, from immigrating. In 1921 Congress enacted a new law that established a quota system, based upon nationality. In a riot of xenophobia, Congress next passed the Immigration Act of 1924, which further restricted the number of non-Northern European immigrants. For many “nationalities,” such as Armenians, visas were limited to approximately 100 a year, even for refugees of the Armenian genocide. Under the same act, Jewish people trying to escape Hitler’s Europe in the 1930s were prohibited from migrating to the U.S. This was not the first or the last time that the restrictive immigration laws in the U.S. literally sent people to their deaths.

The Trump administration attempted to return the U.S. to this xenophobic and anti-immigrant past. One only need think about the Muslim ban, the separation of children from parents at the southern border, the caging of migrant children, and the remain-in-Mexico policy. Although Trump may be gone, many of his policies remain, as does a gutted and dysfunctional immigration system. One example: On March 20, 2020, the Department of Health and Human Services issued an order that allowed for the immediate expulsion of certain migrants entering the U.S. through land borders.

This was done as a so-called means of preventing the spread of COVID-19. Many seeking to immigrate by land from Mexico and Central America were taken into custody by U.S. Border Control agents and simply dumped in Mexico. Often, migrants are not given the opportunity to ask for asylum. Many of those attempting to seek asylum have been women and children traumatized by sexual violence. Well-researched reports say that those expelled to Mexico have no way of meeting their daily needs to survive. Moreover, asylum seekers who live in fear for their lives have been murdered, raped, kidnapped, or disappeared. U.S. law and international treaties, to which the U.S. is a party, provide migrants with the specific right to request asylum. The U.S. is prohibited from returning asylum seekers who face threats and danger in their home country without affording them the right to apply for asylum and conducting a full and fair examination of their claims.

These laws were enacted to prevent a return to our country’s pre-WWII past. Even though a vast array of civil rights organizations have expressed outrage, and a court recently ruled that the order was illegal, the Biden administration has yet to reverse these policies. Biden needs to commit his administration to creating a humanitarian and lawful asylum process. In doing so, we carry on the best parts of our history, while refusing to bow to or prolong the horrors that are also part of the United States’ painful history.

—Felice Batlan

Class Notes

1968

Dawn B. Schulz, McLean, Va., was honored at the May 2021 Florida Bar Annual Convention for her 50-plus years of dedication to the practice of law.

1973

Stephen B. Ruben, San Francisco, joined ADR Services, Inc., in July 2021 and serves as a family law mediator, arbitrator, and private judge.

1975

Paul L. Peterson, Mount Prospect, Ill., was elected as a fellow of the American College of Real Estate Lawyers in April 2021. Peterson is vice president and senior staff underwriter at Fidelity National Family of Title Insurance Companies.

1977

Hon. Pamela Loza, Mount Prospect, Ill., a Cook County circuit court judge for the domestic relations division, received a 2020 Chicago-Kent College of Law Professional Achievement Alumni Award on April 22, 2021.

1978

Jack Carriglio, Glenview, Ill., was named to the 2022 edition of the Best Lawyers in America list. He is a member at Cozen O’Connor and represents clients in commercial disputes, including the prosecution and defense of cases relating to contracts, business torts, bankruptcy, professional disciplinary matters, and real estate litigation.

Eileen M. Letts, Flossmoor, Ill., was named a Second Annual Salute! Top 50 Women in Law Award honoree by Chicago Daily Law Bulletin and Chicago Lawyer Magazine for 2021. Letts is the chief administrative partner at Zuber Lawler LLP.

1979

Michael K. Demetrio, Chicago, was elected to serve on the board of directors of the elite International Academy of Trial Lawyers in April. The board is a highly selective group of the world’s 500 most accomplished lawyers from both sides of the bar. He is a founding partner at Corboy & Demetrio.

Molly K. Ryan, River Forest, Ill., was recognized as one of Crain’s Chicago Business’ Notable General Counsels for 2021. Ryan is general counsel at Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices, Koenig Rubloff Realty Group.

1984

Bill Gallagher, Cincinnati, was named Lawyer of the Year by the Ohio Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and was honored on October 8, 2021. He is a partner at Arenstein & Gallagher.

1987

Amy Campanelli, La Grange, Ill., former Cook County Public Defender, joined Lawndale Christian Legal Center as vice president of restorative justice.

Tim Cavanagh, Chicago, was named a Best Lawyers 2022 Plaintiffs’ Personal Injury Litigation Lawyer of the Year in Chicago. Cavanagh is a nationally recognized personal injury attorney and founding partner at Cavanagh Law Group.

1989

Michael Renzi, Joliet, Ill., was appointed as the Will County Public Defender in February 2021. He is a criminal defense lawyer with more than 31 years of experience.

1991

Vivian R. Khalaf, Burr Ridge, Ill., was named a Second Annual Salute! Top 50 Women in Law Award honoree by Chicago Daily Law Bulletin and Chicago Lawyer Magazine for 2021. Khalaf is the founding partner at Khalaf & Abuzir LLC in Palos Hills and its affiliate office, Agility Services, in Ramallah, Palestine.

Gerise M. LaSpisa, Markesan, Wis., was appointed as Green Lake County district attorney in April 2021. LaSpisa brings experience prosecuting crimes and has also served as executive director of a children’s charity, working to enrich the lives of children with physical disabilities.

Vasudevan Rajaram, Oak Brook, Ill., is now retired and enjoys interactions with Illinois Tech’s Ed Kaplan Family Institute for Innovation and Tech Entrepreneurship and the International Alumni Committee, and is writing a new book titled 9 Steps to Tranquility. Howard E. Rosenblum, Deerfield, Ill., joined McCormack Schreiber Legal Search as managing director. He practiced for the last 17 years in-house at Walgreens, where he served as both senior litigation counsel and director and managing counsel.

1992

Mary A. Korenic, Lynwood, Ill., joined the American Red Cross’ Board of Directors in August 2021. Korenic is chief executive officer of The Chicago Trust Company at Wintrust Wealth Management.

1993

Rachel B. Cowen, Chicago, was named a Second Annual Salute! Top 50 Women in Law Award honoree by Chicago Daily Law Bulletin and Chicago Lawyer Magazine for 2021. Cowen is a partner and employment litigator at McDermott Will & Emery’s labor and employment practice group.

Sheryl J. Halpern, Deerfield, Ill., was elected to the management committee at Much Shelist, P.C., and was named chair of the labor and employment group in July 2021.

1994

Betty Y. Jang, Chicago, was nominated by President Joe Biden to be a member of the Board of Trustees of the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation. Jang is an executive with more than 25 years of legal, compliance, and leadership experience, and most recently was an executive at publicly traded companies.

Mark A. Nieds, Chicago, was honored in the September 2021 issue of Naples Illustrated magazine as a Top Lawyer for Intellectual Property Law. Nieds was also a panelist speaker at an Above Board Chamber in Fort Myers, Florida, in August 2021, where he discussed data and privacy for business