Sin Yen Ling – Staff Attorney
Sin Yen Ling is a staff attorney at the Asian Law Caucus focusing on immigrants rights. Her most current litigation includes Ahmadi v. Chertoff, a class action lawsuit addressing naturalization delays caused by the FBI name check process. It also includes complex litigation involving illegal detention of U.S. citizens; suppression cases in deportation involving constitutional violations; challenging material support to terrorism and general detention/deportation issues in Federal Court. She is a former staff attorney at the New York-based Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF) where she has spent 6 years conducting litigation and advocacy in the areas of anti-Asian violence, racial profiling and immigrant detention/deportation. A native New Yorker, Ms. Ling was born in Manhattan’s Chinatown to immigrant parents who worked in garment factories and restaurants. She is a graduate of New York University and City University of New York School of Law. Ms. Ling managed AALDEF’s Immigrant Access to Justice Project which has been at the forefront of providing direct representation to South Asian, Arab, Filipino and Muslim immigrant detainees facing indefinite detention after September 11 and has been a leading advocate for the defense of civil liberties and civil rights of immigrants and their families.
Ms. Ling has been quoted in the New York Times, Newsweek, New Jersey Law Journal, Crain’s New York Business and the Financial Times and has been profiled in the Village Voice. In 2002, she was selected as one of the Top 25 Lawyers Under 40 by the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association. In 2003, she was awarded the New York County Lawyer’s Association’s Public Service Award and the Joseph Minsky Young Lawyers Award by the American Immigration Lawyers Association. In 2005, she received the Alumni award from CUNY Law School’s Public Interest Law Association, Proclamation of Service from New York City’s City Council, and the Community Service Award from the Islamic Circle of North America.
Ms. Ling is fluent in Cantonese and conversational in Mandarin. She is a member of the New York State Bar, National Immigration Project, and the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
