Crimes and Immigration
We want to help you
Crimes and Immigration
We want to help you
Tel: (213) 943-4555
OUR ATTORNEYS
Each case becomes part of us, because before being lawyers we are human beings
Mr. Diamante, the founder of our firm, has practiced law since 1995. He is a California State Bar certified specialist in Immigration and Nationality Law. Mr. Diamante earned his Bachelor of Arts in Social Science from the University of California, Berkeley with honors and a Juris Doctor from Loyola Law School, Los Angeles.
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Among other notable accomplishments, Mr. Diamante has served as petitioner’s counsel in Galeana-Mendoza v. Gonzalez, 465 F.3d 1054 (9th Cir. 2006) where the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a conviction of domestic battery is not necessarily a deportable offense or a crime involving moral turpitude. Mr. Diamante also served as co-counsel in Hootkins v. Napolitano, CV07-05696 (Central District of California 2009), a class action matter, where the court found that the Department of Homeland Security’s (“DHS”) summary revocations of spouse-based petitions of widows was invalid. The publicity behind the Hootkins v. Napolitano lawsuit motivated the DHS to change its regulations in 2009, and subsequently triggered a favorable change in the law for immigrant widows by the United States Congress and President Obama.
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In 2002, Mr. Diamante gained notoriety when he defended pro bono and won an asylum case for Alex Sanchez, a Salvadoran, former gang-member turned activist. Mr. Sanchez was nearly deported because he was outspoken against the corruption within the Rampart Division of the Los Angeles Police Department. This case shed light on the human rights violations against U.S. deportees from Central America and Alex Sanchez continues his good work as a community worker as executive director for a non-profit organization, Homies Unidos.
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Mr. Diamante also teaches Immigration Consequences of Crimes as an adjunct professor of law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. Mr. Diamante has served on numerous Committees for various Bar Associations. In 2003, the Mexican American Bar Association honored Mr. Diamante with the Attorney of the Year Award.
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Mr. Diamante has been a board member of MABA for several years, has been Chair of its committees on Immigration and the Unauthorized Practice of Law (UPL). Mr. Diamante was president of MABA in 2005. Mr. Diamante has also been an active member of the Hispanic National Bar Association Immigration Committee and speaker at their conference in 2008.
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In 2009-2010, Mr. Diamante was Chair of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA)’s National Consumer Protection Committee and has been a liaison on consumer protection for the Southern California Chapter. Mr. Diamante was president of the Citizens against the Unauthorized Practice of Law (CAUPL), a non-profit organization with the purpose of hindering “Immigrant Consultant fraud.” This organization has successfully sued numerous individuals that have committed fraud or violated the California Immigration Consultant’s Act against vulnerable immigrants.
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In 2022, Mr. Diamante obtained another grant from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Munoz v. DOS (9th Circuit) holds that the doctrine of consular non-reviewability does not apply if the department of State does not provide a timely facially legitimate reason for denying a permanent visa. A non-immigrant married to a United States citizen is entitled to due process.
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Mr. Diamante participated in seminars for the Los Angeles County Bar Association (LACBA), AILA, MABA, Orange County Hispanic Bar Association, and the National Lawyer’s Guild. Internationally, Mr. Diamante has participated as a guest panelist speaker for the Colegio de Abogados, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2003), the Universidad de Guadalajara, Mexico (2008) and the Notary Bar of the State of Jalisco, Mexico (2014). He continues to be legal educator in English and in Spanish.
Attorney Eric Lee
Eric Lee is an immigration attorney with a focus on appellate advocacy at the Ninth Circuit and Board of Immigration Appeals. Mr. Lee’s legal efforts halted the 2017 deportation of a Los Angeles father who was on his way to drop of his daughter at school when ICE arrested him; the case was one of the first internationally-recognized setbacks for Donald Trump's nationwide attack on immigrant rights.
Among his other high-profile victories, Mr. Lee secured permanent residency for an undocumented spouse of an individual impacted by the Adam Walsh Act, despite immigrant advocates calling this "virtually impossible." In addition, Mr. Lee successfully reopened a matter of a father wrongfully convicted of a felony, thus removing the immediate threat of deportation. Mr. Lee also won back the permanent residency of a Southeast Asian immigrant detained by ICE in 2018 and scheduled for deportation to a country of which he had no memory. In 2018 he served as an attorney-monitor of a Texas child detention center as part of the Flores settlement and helped reveal the abuse of child detainees by Southwest Key.
In 2022, Mr. Lee argued and won a case on appeal before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals establishing that US citizen spouses of visa applicants have a due process right to be told the factual basis for a visa denial within a reasonable time. In a published decision, Muñoz v. State Dep’t (21-55365), the Ninth Circuit ruled that the State Department violated the fundamental rights of the wife of a Salvadoran visa applicant who was denied a visa without being given a factual reason for three years. This is published opinion in which a court has ruled that the doctrine of consular non-reviewability does not protect the State Department from having a court review the constitutionality of a visa denial. It will provide an avenue of relief for many immigrants whose families have been separated by unfair visa denials.
Mr. Lee has represented clients from six continents, and none have been deported. He joined the Michigan bar in 2015 after graduating cum laude from the University of Minnesota Law School. He is fluent in Spanish.
He is not a California lawyer and his practice with this office is limited entirely to federal immigration cases.
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