Cori Alonso-Yoder

Ana Corina “Cori” Alonso-Yoder is an Associate Professor in the Fundamentals of Lawyering. Prior to joining the GW Law faculty, Professor Alonso-Yoder was a visiting assistant professor at Howard University School of Law. She has also instructed students on lawyering skills in the Immigrant Justice Clinic at American University Washington College and as the former director of the Federal Legislation Clinic at Georgetown University Law Center.

Professor Alonso-Yoder is a nationally recognized scholar on immigration legislation and the impacts of state, local, and federal laws on immigrant communities. As an expert in health policy for immigrants, she has lectured in interdisciplinary settings including at the Pediatric Academic Society, Georgetown University School of Medicine, the George Washington University School of Medicine & Health Sciences, and the Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Sciences. Professor Alonso-Yoder’s commentary on immigrants’ rights has been featured by ABC News, The Hill, Law360, and the Washington Post, among others. She also regularly comments on Supreme Court decisions that affect the statutory and constitutional rights of noncitizens for the George Washington Law Review online. Her legal scholarship has been published or is forthcoming in the Fordham Law Review, Journal of Legal Education, Denver Law Review, American University Legislation and Policy Brief, and Rutgers Law Review. 

In her public interest legal practice, Professor Alonso-Yoder has worked on a variety of equal justice issues, with a special emphasis on advocacy for LGBT and HIV-positive immigrants. Prior to teaching, Professor Alonso-Yoder was the supervising attorney at Whitman-Walker Health, the country’s longest serving medical-legal partnership. Early in her legal career, Professor Alonso-Yoder represented low-income immigrants in family law and immigration matters at Ayuda. While there, she established an innovative project to meet the civil legal needs of notario fraud victims and coordinated with local stakeholders to enact legislation to protect consumers. In her work to promote immigrants’ rights, she has collaborated on transnational labor policy and worker outreach in central Mexico, provided legal orientation and advice and counsel to inmates in U.S. immigration detention facilities, and served as an assistant to the chair of the United Nations Committee Against Torture in Geneva. Her service to the Latino community has been recognized with the Hispanic Law Conference’s 2020 Edward Bou Award and the DC Courts’ 2016 Legal Community Award. She is actively involved in board service with the immigrant advocacy organizations La Clínica del Pueblo and Centro de los Derechos del Migrante.  

Professor Alonso-Yoder holds an AB magna cum laude from Georgetown University and a JD cum laude from American University Washington College of Law, where she was awarded a full-tuition public interest merit scholarship. Born in Mexico, she grew up in Denver, Colorado and speaks English, French, and Spanish.

In the News