Gerardo’s EJW project will challenge detention conditions imposed on LGBTQ immigrants in detention centers in the South. Before joining NIJC, Gerardo was an associate at a nationally recognized litigation boutique specializing in wrongful convictions civil rights cases and was a Karpatkin Fellow at the ACLU’s Racial Justice Program, where he worked on a Fair Housing Act lawsuit challenging an occupancy ordinance a Minnesota city passed after Somali immigrants moved to its downtown area. He previously clerked on the Eastern and Southern Districts of New York. Gerardo graduated from New York University School of Law in 2019. During law school, he was a student advocate in the Immigrant Rights Clinic and interned with the Immigrant Defense Project, the Urban Justice Center’s Sex Workers Project, and the Center for Constitutional Rights. Gerardo is licensed to practice law in New York.