Cori Alonso-Yoder, J.D.
Assistant Professor of Law, Carey School of Law
Immigration Clinic Director, Carey School of Law
Ana Corina “Cori” Alonso-Yoder is an assistant professor of law and director of the Immigration Clinic, an affiliate of the Chacón Center for Immigrant Justice at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law.
Professor Alonso-Yoder is a nationally recognized scholar on immigration legislation and the impacts of state, local, and federal laws on immigrant communities. Professor Alonso-Yoder’s commentary on immigrants’ rights has been featured by ABC News, The Hill, Law360, and the Baltimore Sun, among others. Professor Alonso-Yoder's legal scholarship appears in a variety of publications, including the Fordham Law Review, Journal of Legal Education, Denver Law Review, and Rutgers University Law Review. In 2024, the UCLA Law Williams Institute awarded her article about legal name changes, “Making a Name for Themselves,” with a prestigious Dukeminier Award. The award is given annually to the best law review articles on sexual orientation and gender identity.
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, she 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 Professor Alonso-Yoder's 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 Edmund Bou Award and the DC Courts’ Legal Community Award. Professor Alonso-Yoder 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.