Michael Maggio, Esquire

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Michael A. Maggio (March 21, 1947– February 10, 2008) was an immigration attorney who lived in Washington, DC. After attending law school at Antioch College of Law in 1978, Maggio opened his own firm on Columbia Road in the Adams Morgan section of DC. He later relocated the firm to Dupont Circle with his wife Candace Kattar, renaming it Maggio & Kattar, PC.

Maggio & Kattar now employs over 50 immigration professionals representing individual foreign nationals and a select group of Fortune 500 and other companies as well as non-profits, universities and diverse institutions across the nation and around the world.

In 1980 Michael took on what arguably is the most significant human rights case in American history and his most influential, Filartiga v. Peña-Irala. The case is seminal not only for what it held - that torture by a government official anywhere in the world violates universal human rights and that a foreign official may be held accountable in U.S. court - but also for what it triggered - the fusing of international legal rights with domestic judicial remedies.

In 1984, Michael became the immigration lawyer for Margaret Randall, a U.S.-born feminist writer who praised leftist revolutions and had lived for many years in Mexico and adopted Mexican citizenship before returning to live in New Mexico. In 1986 an Immigration Judge ruled that her writings made her deportable under the McCarran-Walter Act for advocacy of '"world communism. Finally, in 1989, based largely on arguments that Michael developed, the Board of Immigration Appeals ruled that Ms. Randall never lost her American citizenship in the first place, and therefore should never have been ordered deported.

When a young Russian millionaire banker, Alexandre P. Konanykhine, found himself in the gun sights of organized crime, he fled to New York, then Washington. INS agents arrested him and his wife at their Watergate apartment on a visa violation. The Russians claimed Konanykhine embezzled $8 million in bank funds, and they threatened that unless the INS turned him over, the United States could not occupy its new embassy in Moscow. Konanykhine was granted asylum in 1999 but was rearrested in 2004 and came within minutes of being put on a plane and deported to Russia.

Michael was a key part of the legal team that advised the father of Elián González in 2001. Many doubted that Juan Miguel would be successful in his efforts to rescue the little Cuban boy from his Miami relatives, but Michael was confident that law and justice were clear: that single fathers have a right to choose where they want to live with their children. He said at the time, "The rights of poor fathers trump the perceived rights of wealthier distant relatives."

Most recently, he represented Bolivian scholar Waskar Ari, a Georgetown University graduate barred from reentering the United States to teach at the University of Nebraska.

In 1996, Maggio publicly compared the Washington regional office of the Immigration and Naturalization Service to "Dante's rings of hell." Two years later, he said: "The bureaucracy is unresponsive, the building is Third Worldly, the computer equipment is a decade old. It's a disgrace to have this office serving the nation's capital."

Michael strived to integrate his political work and legal practice. A fluent Spanish speaker, he was active in the opposition to U.S. intervention in Chile, El Salvador and Guatemala in the late 1970s and early 1980s and represented refugees from those countries who sought asylum. He also represented Iranians opposed to U.S. policies and Nicaraguans opposed to U.S. intervention in their country.

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, AILA, and the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild honored Michael on October 26, 2004, "for his courageous and visionary work in defending immigrant rights and, in so doing, strengthening the Constitutional rights of all U.S. residents and citizens." Michael, an author of numerous publications also received the Tahirih Justice Center's 2002 Pushing the Envelope award "for his pioneering legal work and generous support of immigrants."

At the U.S. House of Representatives on April 5, 2001, Michael received the National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom's Constitutional Rights Award "In Recognition Of His Outstanding Legal Service, Commitment to Due Process, And Resolute Stand Against The Use Of Secret Evidence."

As a past President of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) District of Columbia Chapter Michael appeared before the United States Supreme Court in 2007 on behalf of the organization. Michael was active in numerous other immigrant rights organizations, including the National Lawyers Guild Immigration Project and the Tahirih Justice Center. Michael had served as an Adjunct Professor of immigration law at numerous law schools, and he worked as a lobbyist on Capitol Hill before becoming an attorney.

Maggio was born in the East Falls section of the City of Philadelphia to Peter and Michelina Maggio. Michael attended Chestnut Hill Academy and later the Hun School of Princeton receiving honors of distinction from both schools in the last five years as an alumnus. After attending Georgetown University Michael graduated from Temple University in 1971 leading many politically charged protests on and off campus.

Maggio passed away in 2008 at his home due to non-hodgkins lymphoma which he had battled for ten months.