On May 21, 2025, a Williams & Connolly client who came to the U.S. from Peru in 2023 obtained asylum. Our client was a successful police officer who worked on gang investigations until his fellow officers discovered his homosexuality in 2021. He was ostracized by colleagues who told the gangs about his sexual orientation. Over the next two years our client received homophobic death threats and was attacked on two separate occasions by gangs, incurring serious injuries that required surgery. After the second attack, our client fled to the United States to seek asylum in 2023.
Williams & Connolly began representing the client in February 2025. With three months until the client’s merits hearing, Jamie Wolfe and Amanda Koman re-did the immigration paperwork, wrote a pre-hearing brief, secured expert reports and declarations corroborating our client’s story while preparing him for his hearing. In addition to Jaime and Amanda, the Williams & Connolly team supporting this case included Enides Smith Matos, Ana Melara, Catherine Depret, Renato Ramirez, Tom Boss, and James Sasso.