Staff
Staff
Donald M. Kerwin, Jr. has directed the Center for Migration Studies of New York (CMS) since September 2011. He previously worked for the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC) between 1992 and 2008, serving as its Executive Director (ED) for 15 years and its interim ED for six months in late 2012 and early 2013. Upon his arrival at CLINIC in 1992, Mr. Kerwin coordinated CLINIC’s political asylum project for Haitians. CLINIC, a subsidiary of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), is a public interest legal corporation that supports a national network of several hundred charitable legal programs for immigrants. Between 2008 and 2011, Mr. Kerwin served as Vice-President for Programs at the Migration Policy Institute (MPI), where he wrote on immigration, labor standards, and refugee policy issues. He has also served as an associate fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center where he co-directed Woodstock’s Theology of Migration Project; a non-resident senior fellow at MPI; a member of the American Bar Association’s Commission on Immigration; a member of the Council on Foreign Relations’ Immigration Task Force; a board member for Jesuit Refugee Services-USA, the Capital Area Immigrant Rights Coalition, and the Border Network for Human Rights; an advisor to the USCCB Committee on Migration; and a member of numerous advisory groups. Mr. Kerwin writes and speaks extensively on immigration policy, refugee protection, access to justice, national security, and other issues.
Daniela Alulema is the program director for the Center for Migration Studies (CMS). In 2015, Ms. Alulema received her Master of Arts in the Urban Policy Analysis and Management Program at The New School. She obtained her bachelor’s degree in Accounting from Baruch College, CUNY in 2007. Ms. Alulema currently serves as a board member in the New York State Youth Leadership Council, where she also served as media and budgeting coordinator from 2009 to 2011. Originally from Quito, Ecuador, Ms. Alulema is fluent in Spanish and enjoys to travel.
Aimee Wenyue Chen is the publications coordinator for the Center for Migration Studies (CMS). Prior to joining CMS, Ms. Chen consulted for the Bulgarian government’s refugee agency on best practices and trends in refugee response, and worked with a local Japanese government in immigrant integration and international exchange projects. She has also coordinated outreach for a social enterprise focusing on refugee employment, as well as conducted research in Turkey on the gendered impact of policy on urban refugees.
Ms. Chen holds a master’s degree from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, where she focused on the intersection of migration, gender, and security; and a bachelor’s degree in Japanese literature and Chinese literature from the University of California, Berkeley. She was born in Nanchang, China, and speaks four languages.
Guadalupe Chavez is the outreach and events assistant for the Center for Migration Studies. Ms. Chavez received her master’s degree from The New School for Social Research in politics with a focus on US-Mexico migration politics. In 2018, Ms. Chavez was awarded the Fulbright Garcia-Robles research fellowship to conduct research in Mexico. During her time in Mexico, her research explored how the Mexican government has responded to the rise of voluntary and involuntary returns to Mexico from the United States and what type of political and social demands arise post-deportation. Her academic and non-academic work seeks to bring into dialogue policymakers, academics, and communities to design, shape, and implement policies and global norms rooted in solidarity and political innovation. Furthermore, she has experience working in the nonprofit sector, in politics at the state and federal level, and collaborating with academics.
Robert Warren served as a demographer for 34 years with the United States Census Bureau and the former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). Mr. Warren served as Director of the INS’s Statistics Division from 1986 to 1995. One of his accomplishments at INS was to project accurate ranges of the number of unauthorized immigrants that would apply in each state under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA). During his service, he also worked for three years with the staff of the Panel on Immigration Statistics of the National Academy of Sciences, which published the report, “Immigration Statistics: A Story of Neglect” co-edited with Daniel B. Levine and Kenneth Hill (National Academy Press, 1985). Mr. Warren retired from INS in January 2002.
Mr. Warren released “Unauthorized Immigration to the United States: Annual Estimates and Components of Change, by State, 1990 to 2010,” with John Robert Warren in the International Migration Review, Vol. 47, No. 2, Summer 2013. His other signature publications include: “Annual Estimates of the Unauthorized Immigrant Population Residing in the United States, by State: 1990 to 2000,” (Department of Homeland Security, 2003); “Estimates of the Undocumented Immigrant Population Residing in the United States: October 1996,” (INS, 1997); “Determinants of Unauthorized Migration to the United States,” with Linda S. Peterson (Center for International Research (CIR), US Bureau of the Census, 1990); and “A Count of the Uncountable: Estimates of Undocumented Aliens Counted in the 1980 United States Census,” with Jeffrey S. Passel, Demography, Vol. 24, No. 3, August 1987.
Mr. Warren has testified before Congress concerning the estimation of undocumented immigration and served as an expert witness for the Department of Justice on the issue of educating undocumented children. He was the US representative at United Nations meetings on immigration statistics in Geneva in May 1986 and February 1991, and an advisor to the US Commission on Agricultural Workers in 1992. For three years, Mr. Warren also played professional baseball in the Chicago White Sox organization. He holds a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science in Education from Indiana State University.
John J. McHale joined the Center for Migration Studies in March 2017. Mr. McHale’s prior experience includes a number of financial management positions in the private and public sector, including Controller of Foster Higgins, a benefit consulting firm acquired by Mercer Inc; Business Manager at Memorial Sloan- Kettering Cancer Center, and Director of Finance and Administration at PENCIL, a NYC based educational nonprofit. Mr. McHale earned a BBA in finance from Iona College, and an MBA in financial management from the Lubin School at Pace University. A first-generation American, Mr. McHale resides in New Hyde Park, NY with his wife and daughter, and is an avid tennis player and cyclist.
Editors
John J. Hoeffner was appointed co-editor of the Journal on Migration and Human Security in 2015. Mr. Hoeffner is an attorney, and his varied law career has included stints at several law firms and at the Civil Rights Division of the US Department of Justice. He also clerked for Judge Lawrence W. Pierce on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He has taught at Villanova University, Georgetown University Law Center, and American University Washington College of Law. He received his professional law degree from St. John’s University School of Law, and holds a master’s degree in law from Georgetown University Law Center. At St. John’s, he was editor-in-chief of the St. John’s Law Review and The Catholic Lawyer. He has written numerous articles on immigration and other topics. He is also the author of one book, Stepping Out of the Brain Drain: Applying Catholic Social Teaching in a New Era of Migration, which he wrote with his wife and fellow JMHS editor, Michele Pistone. Prior to attending law school, Mr. Hoeffner served as a military policeman in the US Army.
Michele R. Pistone is a professor of law at Villanova University School of Law, where she has taught since 1999. At Villanova, she founded the school’s in-house clinical program, which she directed for nine years, as well as the Clinic for Asylum, Refugee and Emigrant Services (CARES). Through CARES, Professor Pistone works with law students to provide free legal representation to asylum seekers and others fleeing persecution and violence. Professor Pistone has served on the University’s Partnership Committee with Catholic Relief Services (CRS) since its inception in 2004, and through the Partnership has organized conferences on human trafficking, Iraqi refugees, and the migration of unaccompanied children in collaboration with CRS.
Professor Pistone has written extensively on immigration and refugee protection, including on issues related to detention of asylum seekers, the one-year deadline for asylum applications, expedited removal, overseas refugee resettlement, as well as on the migration of skilled and educated migrants. Her book, Stepping Out of the Brain Drain: Applying Catholic Social Thought in a New Era of Migration (Lexington Books), which she co-authored with JMHS co-editor, John J. Hoeffner, as well as other articles and book chapters, looks at migration through the lens of Catholic Social Thought.
Professor Pistone has taught at American University Washington College of Law, Georgetown Law, and as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Malta. Before becoming a professor, she served as the acting legal director of Human Rights First, where she coordinated a Congressional campaign to defeat certain legislative initiatives that would have imposed stricter restrictions on asylum protection.
Professor Pistone is interested in social media and its role in creating networks and facilitating movements. She blogs on Best Practices in Legal Education and the Legal Technology Blog. She is also a TEDx Licensee and has organized two TEDxVillanovaU conferences at Villanova University.
Dr. Jamie Winders is Professor and Chair of the Department of Geography in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. She was appointed editor of the International Migration Review, starting November 2017. Dr. Winders specializes in cultural and social geography and international migration. She co-edited The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Cultural Geography and published Nashville in the New Millennium: Immigrant Settlement, Urban Transformation, and Social Belonging with Russell Sage in 2013. She holds a PhD from the University of Kentucky.
Publishers may send books for review to Dr. Winders at the following address:
Jamie Winders
Department of Geography
144 Eggers Hall
The Maxwell School
Syracuse University
Syracuse, NY 13244
Team
Mary Brown first came to the Center for Migration Studies (CMS) in 1979 to work on a dissertation on the intersection of Italian immigration and New York City Catholicism, which eventually resulted in the CMS publication Churches, Communities and Children. Dr. Brown has been associated with CMS since then, first as a researcher writing parish community studies and editing book-length memoirs for publication, and since 1995 as an archivist processing collections and answering researchers’ questions. She also serves as the archivist and as an adjunct professor at Marymount Manhattan College.
Thomas J. Shea is the editor of CMS’ Migration Update, a weekly digest of news and other information related to national and international migration. In addition, Mr. Shea is a Senior Staff Attorney with CUNY Citizenship Now! in New York City. He was formerly the Director of Training & Technical Assistance at the New York Immigration Coalition and a staff attorney with the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC). While at CLINIC, Mr. Shea represented naturalization cases and coordinated group naturalization application processing events. With CUNY Citizenship Now!, Mr. Shea oversees a legal staff of 36 who work on free group application assistance events as well as provide immigration legal services throughout the five boroughs of New York City.