Sharma-Crawford Attorneys At Law

My partner, Katsiaryna, is an asylum seeker and a thyroid cancer survivor who depends on daily medication. She spent more than a hundred days in immigration detention, and her health seriously deteriorated there. I am not a lawyer. For weeks I could not find anyone willing to take her case, so I filed her federal habeas petition myself. It was not enough on its own. Sharma-Crawford is the reason it worked. They entered the case a few days before the hearing and, in four days, rebuilt it from the ground up. Rekha Sharma-Crawford worked on the filings until four in the morning several nights in a row; I know because I stayed up with her, answering questions and sending documents as she asked for them. In court she cross-examined the facility's medical staff about the care Katsiaryna had received, and asked that the restraints be removed from her client in the courtroom. William Hanna was co-counsel from the first day, his name on every filing beside Rekha's, and his steady presence carried through the whole case. Then Katsiaryna was taken to a hospital without a word to her attorneys or to me, and the government would not say where she was. Rekha got an answer. She had the court convene an emergency conference within hours, spoke on the record to the Kansas City Star about a medical condition that custody had failed to stabilize, and kept pressing on every legal front at once. Days later, ICE released Katsiaryna on her own recognizance, with an ankle monitor instead of a cell, right in her hospital room. Rekha was on the phone with her while she signed the papers. The firm walked us every step of the way home to Miami. We had promised Rekha one thing in return, and we sent it the day we arrived: a photograph of the two of us, together, with the ankle monitor still on and the fear finally gone. This office answers faster than any law firm I have ever dealt with. Rekha, the senior partner, sends the updates herself, on matters large and small. William Hanna, who had carried the case alongside her from the first day, wrote to us after the release with the kind of words you keep. Rafael Contreras is always reachable and is the proactive link between the attorneys, the client, and everyone around the case. Every member of this team showed a depth of commitment and a plain human decency that you do not expect from a firm this sought-after, taking a case on an emergency footing when what was at stake was a person's life. Katsiaryna is alive, she is home, and her right to due process has been restored. That is the work of Rekha Sharma-Crawford, William Hanna, Rafael Contreras, and every person at Sharma-Crawford. We are grateful to each of them for the moment of tears and relief when the phone rang and they told us she was coming home.