Delfina Duarte joined the law offices of Chain-Younger in 2001. She works under the direction of James Yoro in the Social Security Department. She assists clients who are seeking disability benefits under the Social Security Administration. She has a B.A. from University of California, San Diego in Third World Studies with a minor in Political Science.
Prior to joining Chain-Younger, she worked for the non-profit law office of Public Counsel in Los Angeles. She remained there for eight years doing human rights and political asylum cases. As the head legal assistant for the Immigrant's Rights Project, she assisted clients from all over the world for whom the U.S. is the last place of refuge and where return to their home country may mean death or torture. Additionally, she assisted battered immigrant women and children in filing petitions under the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA).
She spent countless hours training law students and volunteer attorneys from such firms as Morrison and Forester and Sidley and Austin, in representing clients from administrative law hearings to appeals at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Prior to leaving Public Counsel, she assisted in the litigation of immigration court national security cases involving classified evidence.
Delfina Duarte