Caucus weekend awards and preview: Jojo Annobil, executive director, Immigrant Justice Corps

As an immigrant from Ghana, Jojo Annobil experienced America’s immigration process firsthand. After graduating from law school, he set out to ease the pathway for others.

“I have felt blessed because every day I have been able to make a difference – every day, every day. And that is what keeps me going,” said Annobil, a resident of Plainsboro, New Jersey. “I am originally from Ghana, West Africa, so I have always been interested in the immigrant experience … been interested in helping people out, knowing how complex the system is.”

Annobil started out at the Legal Aid Society, helping criminal defendants file appeals. He then moved to the organization’s immigration law unit as attorney-in-charge. Annobil said there is often an overlap between criminal and immigration matters, and when he moved within Legal Aid Society divisions, he spent two years advising criminal attorneys about the potential immigration-related consequences of convictions.

Last summer, Annobil became the executive director of the Immigrant Justice Corps, a fellowship program that trains recent graduates and places them with community-based legal services providers, where they work on benefits cases for clients seeking green cards and citizenship or on removal and deportation cases.

Annobil said he is currently focused on the organization’s forthcoming expansion beyond the five boroughs to parts of Long Island and the Hudson Valley, and into Albany and Buffalo. He is also working with fellows – and the communities where they’re deployed – to assist those impacted by President Donald Trump’s directive restricting immigration from several predominantly Muslim countries.

When not in court or deploying fellows to court, Annobil serves as co-chairman of the New York State Bar Association’s Committee on Immigrant Representation and co-teaches a class on immigration defense at the New York University School of Law.