HIRC Welcomes New Staff

The Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program recently welcomed Mariam Liberles as a staff attorney, as well as Sameer Ahmed as Clinical Instructor.

Mariam Liberles

via HIRC

We are thrilled to announce that Mariam Liberles will be joining the team at the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program (HIRC) as a staff attorney.

Prior to joining HIRC, Mariam worked for nine years at Catholic Charities of Boston as a supervising attorney (2014-2020) and a staff attorney (2011-2014). At Catholic Charities, Mariam represented clients in a wide range of immigration matters, including family-based and humanitarian cases. She also previously served as a volunteer attorney in the Immigration Unit at Greater Boston Legal Services and worked as an immigration attorney at the International Institute of Boston. Mariam received her B.A. from UCLA and her J.D. from Seattle University School of Law. Mariam is originally from Yerevan, Armenia and speaks Armenian, Russian, Spanish, and basic French.

Please join us in wishing a warm welcome to Mariam!

Sameer Ahmed

via HIRC

We are delighted to announce that Sameer Ahmed will be joining the team at the Harvard Immigration & Refugee Clinical Program!

Sameer was previously an assistant teaching professor at Northeastern University School of Law. Prior to that, he served as a senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Southern California, where he specialized in immigrants’ rights litigation and policy advocacy. His work included challenging federal immigration national security policies that discriminate against Muslim immigrants, ensuring mentally ill immigrants have access to counsel in removal proceedings, protecting the rights of DACA recipients and immigrants in the military, and advocating on behalf of immigrants in Orange County, California. During that time, Sameer served on the board of the Orange County Justice Fund and the City of Santa Ana’s Sanctuary Policy Advisory Group.

Sameer has also served as a senior litigation associate at WilmerHale and as a Skadden Fellow at the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF). He has taught as an adjunct professor in the Immigrant Rights Clinic at the University of California, Irvine School of Law, and at the University of Maine School of Law. He clerked for Judge Kermit V. Lipez of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and for Judge Patti B. Saris of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts.  He received a J.D. from Yale Law School, a Master’s Degree in Legal Research from Oxford University (where he was a Marshall Scholar), and a Bachelor’s Degree in International Relations from Stanford University.

Sameer also serves on the board of Project Citizenship, a nonprofit agency which provides high-quality free legal services to immigrants all over Massachusetts.

Please join us in welcoming Sameer to the HIRC family!