Biography
Yliana Johansen-Méndez (she/her/ella) is the Associate Director of Immigrant Defenders Law Center (ImmDef), a nonprofit legal services organization dedicated to universal representation for all immigrants facing removal. She has been leading ImmDef’s Children’s Representation Project since she joined the organization in February 2018. Yliana started her legal career as an Equal Justice Works Fellow at Kids in Need of Defense, where she did groundbreaking work with unaccompanied minors, creating the first One-Parent SIJS Manual for attorneys seeking predicate orders before family courts in California. She then served as an Attorney Advisor to the Las Vegas Immigration Court, and Asylum Officer for USCIS’s Los Angeles Asylum Office, before returning to practice removal defense at ImmDef. She is a graduate of Occidental College and Boston College Law School, and is an attorney licensed in the state of California.