American Civil Liberties Union

Kate Desormeau is a Staff Attorney at the Immigrants’ Rights Project, where she has worked since 2010.  Her work focuses on federal immigration enforcement programs, local and state immigration enforcement issues, and national security.

Her cases have included al-Kidd v. United States (challenging the FBI’s unlawful use of the federal “material witness” statute to arrest and detain a Muslim U.S. citizen after 9/11); HICA v. Bentley (challenging Alabama’s unconstitutional anti-immigrant law, HB 56); Galarza v. United States (challenging a Pennsylvania jail’s unlawful detention of a U.S. citizen based solely on an erroneous immigration “detainer”); and several removal cases challenging ICE’s unconstitutional arrest and interrogation practices during a worksite raid.

Prior to joining the Immigrants' Rights Project, Kate worked as a researcher at Harvard University’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, and as a Social Justice and Impact Litigation Fellow in the Santa Clara County Counsel’s Office in California.  She clerked for the Honorable Marsha Berzon of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.  She holds a J.D. from Yale Law School and a Masters Degree in Refugee Studies from Oxford University.