Matthew Webster is committed to volunteering his time and talent to help those in need and helps mentor lawyers in departments outside of his area of law. A few of these success stories are here:
MATTHEW WEBSTER
KIERSTEN MCMAHON
Matthew and paralegal Kiersten McMahon had the chance to shake the hand of one of Minnesota’s newest asylees this past year after Matthew took a case from The Advocates for Human Rights in 2014. The client and her family had experienced severe past persecution in her home country due to their political opposition to the ruling party, the Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), and Zimbabwe’s President for 40 years, Robert Mugabe. Her case became unexpectedly complicated, however, when it was discovered, at her asylum interview in 2017, that a friend had inadvertently used the client’s passport while she was hospitalized following a government attack in 2013. The case was then transferred to the Fort Snelling Immigration Court for a full individual merits hearing. After years of master calendar hearings and interminable delays, the client finally had three individual merits hearings at the Fort Snelling Immigration Court. The testimony included that of her daughter, who had just graduated with honors from St. Catherine’s University in St. Paul, and the friend who had used the client’s passport and now wanted to right this wrong. The friend appeared telephonically from Zimbabwe when it was very late at night due to time zone differences, sleeping in her office in order testify for her friend. At the end of the hearing, the judge granted asylum from the bench, bringing years of uncertainty and fear to an end, and marking this grateful client’s first day of asylum in the United States.
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