Susan L. Burke is an experienced litigator with 28 years of experience in federal class and complex litigation, specializing in bringing federal class action or mass tort lawsuits to reform broken systems or fix societal problems. Presently, Ms. Burke serves as court-appointed class counsel in litigation involving telephone companies overcharging prison inmates. Ms. Burke also serves as leadMDL counsel in theKBR Burn PitMDL, pending in federal court in Maryland. In that case, Ms. Burke represents military personnel harmed by Halliburton/KBR’s misconduct in Iraq and Afghanistan. Ms. Burke also serves as lead counsel in a series of lawsuits seeking to reform the military’s deficiencies in prosecuting rape and sexual assault.Ms. Burke’s past work in American federal courts has had a global impact: As lead counsel for Iraqi victims, Ms. Burke achieved a first by negotiating multi-million dollar settlements with defense contractors involved in the Abu Ghraib torture, and with Blackwater, the private company responsible for the Nissor Square Massacre. Ms. Burke has previously prosecuted cases against prison officials who used excessive force and failed to provide adequate medical care to an inmate. She has numerous publications in Legal Times, American Society of International Law Proceedings, and other journals. Ms. Burke has appeared as a guest on Real Time with Bill Maher, Nightline, CNN’s Amanpour, PBS NewsHour, and many other television news shows. Ms. Burke and her legal work have been profiled by the New York Times, Washington Post, Philadelphia Daily News, and Baltimore Sun, as well as other news outlets. In June 2015, the National Law Journal named Ms. Burke one of the top 75 female attorneys in the nation.

Mark Dow is a freelance writer and poet whose work has appeared in the Miami Herald, New York Times, The Hill, Boston Review, Birmingham News, Prison Legal News, and numerous other literary publications. His book American Gulag: Inside U.S. Immigration Prisons (2005) examines the prisons and processing centers across the country that profit from contracts to hold INS prisoners within the context of immigration laws and practices. American Gulag documents illegal beatings, prolonged detention, inhumane conditions and racism in the immigration prison system that occur, in part, as a result of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) secrecy and lack of accountability; the book includes extensive interviews with jailers, wardens, and immigration officials, in addition to detainees. Mr. Dow is also co-editor of Machinery of Death: The Reality of America’s Death Penalty Regime (2002). He teaches English at Hunter College.

Judith Greene is a criminal justice policy analyst who has researched prison privatization under fellowships from the Open Society Institute of the Soros Foundation and the Institute on Criminal Justice of the University of Minnesota Law School. She is currently Director of Justice Strategies, which provides high quality research to support grassroots movements advocating for criminal justice and immigration reform. Ms. Greene’s work on criminal sentencing issues, police practices and correctional policy has been published in numerous books and journals, and has been cited in media outlets including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and National Public Radio.

Donald Kerwin
Executive Director, Center for Migration Studies

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 between September 2012 and March 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 charitable legal programs for immigrants.  Between 2008 and 2011, Mr. Kerwin served as Vice-President for Programs at the Migration Policy Institute (MPI), where 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 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; a board member for the Capital Area Immigrant Rights Coalition; an advisor to the USCCB Committee on Migration; a non-resident senior fellow at MPI; and a member of numerous advisory groups. He currently serves on the board of directors for the Border Network for Human Rights in El Paso, Texas.