Leena Khandwala has been practicing immigration law for over 18 years. She is the managing attorney for the Detention and Deportation Defense Initiative (DDDI) at Rutgers Law School’s Immigration Rights Clinic, a NJ state funded program aimed at providing legal representation to detained and non-detained New Jersey residents facing removal. The Rutgers Immigrant Rights Clinic is one of four partners in this exciting project, aimed at ensuring that indigent immigrants in New Jersey have high quality pro bono representation in their removal proceedings. Leena supervises a team of 5 attorneys and a paralegal in a wide ranging and fast paced docket of detained and non-detained immigration matters before the Immigration Courts and the Board of Immigration Appeals, and in federal courts.
Leena is also serves as adjunct clinical professor co-teaches the Immigrant Rights Clinic, where she supervises initial and advanced students enrolled in the Clinic. Additionally, Leena supervises and mentors nonclinical law student interns providing assistance with DDDI. Leena has previously practiced at The Legal Aid Society, Brooklyn Defender Services, and in private practice. Leena has also worked as a teaching fellow at the Immigration and Human Rights Clinic and the Civil Litigation Clinic at Seton Hall University School of Law and the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies at U.C. Hastings College of the Law.
Leena received her J.D. from Fordham University School of Law in 2004. She was a Stein Public Interest Scholar and a Crowley International Human Rights Scholar. She grew up in Karachi, Pakistan, where she did her Masters in Business Administration at the Institute of Business Administration, in Karachi. She currently lives in South Orange, NJ with her spouse and two children.