Volunteers of Legal Service is pleased to announce the hiring of Sin Yen Ling, Esq., as our new Immigration Project Director. Prior to joining VOLS, Sin Yen launched the Padilla practice at Queens Defenders (formerly Queens Law Associates) where she was the Supervising Immigration Attorney.  She was the Senior Staff Attorney at Asian Americans Advancing Justice: Asian Law Caucus, where her litigation included GLAHR v. Deal and HICA v. Bentley, challenging SB1070 copycats in Georgia and Alabama. It also included complex litigation involving illegal detention of U.S. citizens, suppression cases in deportation, and challenging material support to terrorism.  

Sin Yen also founded, ASPIRE, the first pan Asian undocumented youth group in the country. She is a former staff attorney at the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF) where she spent six years conducting litigation and advocacy in the areas of anti-Asian violence, racial profiling and post 9/11 immigrant detention/deportation. She is admitted to practice in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the Eastern and Southern District of New York.  She has a J.D. from the City University of New York School of Law and a B.A. from New York University. She is also a member of the New York State Bar, the National Immigration Project, and the American Immigration Lawyers Association. Sin Yen speaks Chinese: Cantonese and Mandarin. A native New Yorker, she was born in Manhattan’s Chinatown to immigrant parents who worked in garment factories and restaurants.