Meet Our 2024 Law Student Interns
Every year, law students have the opportunity to intern with Oasis during the summer, fall, and spring semesters. They work directly with our clients under attorney supervision to help prepare asylum and other affirmative immigration cases, declarations and affidavits, and represent clients at their asylum interviews before USCIS.
Our current Law Student Interns are Mars B., Michele Canny, Chase Morgan, and Thomas McDowell.
Michele (she/her) is a Bay Area native and current UC Law, San Francisco student. Her passion for immigration law comes from being the daughter of an immigrant from El Salvador and learning about the hardships Salvadoran immigrants faced during their Civil War. In summer 2018, Michele worked at an immigration detention center in Brindisi, Italy, creating workshops for refugees. After graduating, Michele worked with the Northern California Innocence Project for three years, where she educated communities on wrongful convictions and advocated for policy change to protect the rights of exonerated individuals. From 2022 to 2023, Michele conducted a Fulbright research project in Sicily to locate and map out nonprofits providing resources for migrant women. She identifies as Queer and believes Oasis’ approach in providing immigration and social services to LGBTQ+ immigrants is invaluable to a vulnerable community.
Chase (he/him) grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, and has spent time living in Seattle, San Francisco, and Boston. In the fall of 2024, Chase will be attending his final year of law school at Northeastern University and hopes to work as an immigration lawyer after graduation. Prior to law school, Chase worked as a case manager at a number of nonprofit organizations in the Bay Area, including Berkeley Food & Housing Project and Mission Neighborhood Health Center. In those roles, Chase enjoyed working with the diverse immigrant populations in the Bay Area. In his free time, Chase enjoys hiking, reading, indoor rock climbing, and drawing.
Thomas (he/him) is a Bay Area native, raised in Pleasant Hill. He attended the University of California, Los Angeles, and earned dual degrees in both Comparative Literature and French. He is currently a rising 2L at the University of Texas School of Law. Before attending law school, he assisted in the defense of pro-bono asylum cases with a small law firm in the East Bay. While working on these cases, Thomas found his interest in aiding asylees on their journey to asylum. At law school, Thomas is involved with his law school’s queer affinity group, as well as the Gender Affirmation Project, which provides trans people pro-bono assistance with name and gender marker changes in Texas. In his spare time, Thomas enjoys reading and learning languages (currently learning Ukrainian and Italian).
Mars (any pronouns) is a New Yorker and law student at UC Davis School of Law. She was inspired to go to law school after doing research on and working at the US-Mexico border in Nogales, Sonora, Mexico. Her career goals and personal goals overlap in the pursuit of representing and advocating for marginalized groups, which began when she was a junior in high school after the Parkland school shooting. Before law school, she attended Fordham University and graduated summa cum laude as a Philosophy and Political Science double major. In her free time, she enjoys learning new languages, watercolor painting, and curating unique pieces for her closet.
Collectively, our law student interns have supported filings for immigration cases across our legal programs (Asylum, Residency, and Naturalization). Most recently, they helped draft our comment against Biden’s newest Asylum Ban.
Oasis works with law schools to facilitate formal externships for credit.
Published July 15, 2024