Our Team

Ellen Kemp

Co-Founder & Deputy Director

Ellen is Deputy Director and a co-founder of Just Futures Law, where she directs the finance and administration team. She has over 25 years of experience in the field of non-profit immigration law and advocacy, having performed direct service work locally; technical assistance, training, and advocacy work at the national level; and operations and finance as part of collaborative, non-profit leadership teams. Ellen previously worked as Director of Legal Advocacy and subsequently the Director of Finance and Operations for the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild; Citizenship and Immigration Specialist at the Latin American Health Institute; and Managing Immigration Paralegal for the International Institute of New England. She received her BA from Tufts University and MA from Middlebury College.

Laura Rivera

Senior Staff Attorney

As a Senior Staff Attorney, Laura works at the intersection of immigration, civil rights, and privacy law. She has more than 10 years of experience in the immigrant rights movement.

Previously, she served as a program director and litigator at the Southern Poverty Law Center; a co-founder of Sur Legal Collaborative; and a farmworker attorney for Georgia Legal Services. She graduated from Emory University, New York University, and Emory Law, where she was a Woodruff Fellow.

Sejal Zota

Co-Founder & Legal Director

Sejal is Legal Director and a co-founder of Just Futures Law. She works at the intersection of civil rights, privacy, and technology law. With more than 20 years of experience, Sejal has litigated and argued several high-impact decisions on behalf of individuals and amicus curiae. She has argued before the Second, Seventh, and Ninth Circuits and the North Carolina Supreme Court and Appeals Court.

Previously, Sejal was the Legal Director of the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild; an attorney at the UNC School of Government; a teaching fellow at NYU Law; a public defender with the Bronx Defenders, and a Kirkland and Ellis fellow at the Immigrant Defense Project. She graduated from Duke University and the NYU School of Law.

Amina Rahman

Finance & Operations Coordinator

Amina (they & she) has studied, organized and worked at the intersection of labor, immigration and the state for over a decade. Amina received their BA in Anthropology from Reed College and wrote their senior thesis on the politics of trauma and storytelling in the United States' immigration system and in particular for humanitarian visas. She worked as a paralegal and translator for immigration attorneys through and after college and then shifted to supporting service workers’ organizing for better working conditions with the Burgerville Workers Union and SEIU’s Justice for Janitors campaigns. They are passionate about building and sustaining dynamic and democratic movement organizations and bring experience as a facilitator and trainer of consensus to their work in administration at Just Futures Law.

Amanda Carlin

Litigation Attorney

Amanda (she/they) is a Litigation Attorney at Just Futures Law. She works at the intersection of civil rights, privacy, and technology law. She is a dedicated movement lawyer with experience in research, direct services, and litigation. Prior to joining JFL in 2026, Amanda provided legal services to people navigating reentry after incarceration and brought litigation to strengthen employment rights for people with conviction histories in California.
Amanda graduated from Brown University and UCLA School of Law, where she specialized in Critical Race Studies. After law school, Amanda clerked on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals for Judge Harry Pregerson. She is based in Los Angeles and admitted to practice law in California and New York.

Amanda graduated from Brown University and UCLA School of Law, where she specialized in Critical Race Studies. After law school, Amanda clerked on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals for Judge Harry Pregerson. She is based in Los Angeles and admitted to practice law in California and New York.

Julie Mao

Co-Founder & Deputy Director

Julie works at the intersection of civil rights, privacy, and technology law. She has more than 15 years of experience in the immigrant rights, police accountability, and labor rights movement. She was a senior attorney at the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild and attorney at the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice. Julie is a graduate of NYU School of Law where she was a Root-Tilden-Kern Scholar, and a former Equal Justice Works fellow.

Paromita Shah

Co-Founder & Executive Director

Paromita is the Founding Executive Director of Just Futures Law. For more than twenty-five years, she has advanced legal and advocacy strategies to address mass deportation, criminalization, and surveillance in close partnership with grassroots movements, including defending them against retaliation and threats for exercising freedom of speech. In 2019, she co-founded Just Futures Law in response to a call from immigrant rights organizers. The organization provides litigation and legal policy support to grassroots advocacy campaigns, with particular expertise in surveillance and data technologies.

Paromita has led national advocacy, education, and training efforts, provided legal assistance to hundreds of people in immigration detention, and trained and mentored hundreds of attorneys. Her expertise is often sought by journalists, academics, and advocates. She has also authored numerous reports and resources, including co-authoring The Tech Behind ICE: Oligarchs, Immigration Enforcement and the Threat to Democracy (2026), HART Attack: How DHS’ Massive Biometrics Database Will Supercharge Surveillance and Threaten Rights (2022), and Who’s Behind ICE: The Tech and Data Companies Fueling Deportations (2018). Her work has been featured in NPR, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Nation, the Guardian, PBS and other major outlets.

Paromita is a 2023 Rockwood National LIO Yearlong Fellow, was a member of the Aspen Digital Council for a Fair Data Future, and received the 2020 Outstanding Clinical Alumni Award from Suffolk University Law School. Previously, she served as Associate Director of the National Project of the National Lawyers Guild, Detention Project Director at the Capital Area Immigrants’ Rights Coalition in Washington, DC, and staff attorney at Greater Boston Legal Services. She is a graduate of Suffolk University Law School and McGill University in Montreal, QC.

Shubra Ohri

Deputy Director of Litigation

Shubra is Deputy Director of Litigation at Just Futures Law. Before joining JFL, she was senior counsel at MacArthur Justice Center, where she litigated complex civil rights cases challenging abuses in the criminal legal system and pushing for systemic change. There, she led teams in obtaining a landmark settlement abolishing a Department of Corrections policy mandating the prolonged use of solitary confinement against people living with HIV, challenging inhumane detention conditions at the St. Louis City Justice Center jail while strategizing alongside local justice movements, and challenging dangerous extreme heat conditions in prison. Earlier in her legal career she worked at Earthjustice as Senior Counsel and the People’s Law Office as an Associate Attorney. She also previously taught at Washington University in St. Louis School of Law and DePaul University. She is passionate about litigating alongside movements to build power and applying a human rights framework to domestic litigation.

She is a graduate of the University of Michigan and American University Washington College of Law. She is currently pursuing an MsC in International Human Rights at Oxford University.

Lesley Nash