Latham Receives Above & Beyond Award from Sanctuary for Families

A team from our New York office — including partner Joshua Tinkelman, associates Mina Kim and Alexandra J. Kustra, and legal talent manager Lauren Mastronardi — were honored with Sanctuary for Families’ 2025 Above & Beyond award. This award recognizes the team’s efforts to secure asylum for a woman with severe disabilities from The Gambia.

Latham provided help to our client after her green card application was denied. She is severely disabled and was undergoing cancer treatment at the time. We determined that our client’s derivative asylum status had been terminated when her parent became a US citizen — an often-unknown implication of US citizenship — rendering our client ineligible for a green card. This denial had grave consequences, both for our client’s continued presence in the United States and her ability to access critical life-saving care. The Latham team, in collaboration with Sanctuary for Families, pursued a rare and complex legal remedy in US immigration law, ultimately restoring her asylum status and allowing her to reapply for her green card.

Sanctuary for Families is New York's leading service provider for survivors of domestic violence, sex trafficking, and related forms of violence, with lawyers in our New York office donating thousands of hours in free legal services to their clients since 2001. Latham has been recognized with an Above & Beyond Award for the last three years in a row.