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High-caliber immigration lawyer packs a wallop
Oh yeah, if you didn't get the clue, he wears body armor, too!
By Dan Sforzas
FOR MOST lawyers, wearing bulletproof vests is not standard procedure. Nor are travel arrangements made courtesy of the U.S. Capitol Police. Such measures, though, have become somewhat commonplace to attorney Michael Wildes, who has handled the immigration affairs of a suspected terrorist, a high-profile Saudi defector, and has helped negotiate the safe return of children kidnapped to foreign lands.
Wildes, a former special assistant U.S. attorney in New York and an Englewood councilman, is becoming well-known in the immigration community for handling the toughest, most complicated, and potentially dangerous cases in immigration law.
“I think we send out a message to people who would want to undermine the fundamental tenets of our government when we put ourselves out there and stand up for what we believe in,” said Wildes. “If I were to stand down because of threats they level, they win.”
As an immigration attorney, he has made headlines by defending the right to asylum for a suspect in a Saudi bombing that killed 19 U.S. serviceman in 1996. And he represented a Pakistani who claimed to have knowledge of a 1998 nuclear attack on India (it never occurred).
In September, the 34-year-old lawyer helped Petya Petrov, a Manhattan doctor, retrieve her three children from Syria, where they were allegedly being held unlawfully by her estranged husband, Viktor Petrov.
And a few years ago, he became involved with a Saudi Arabian defector who was being hunted by a terrorist party from his country.
Wildes, a boisterous, fast-talking Type-A personality who can be pushy and caring at the same time, seems to be driven by the high-pressure cases his clients bring him. Always found with a phone at his ear (he owns two cellular phones), Wildes claims to sleep only three hours a night and is in his office at 5:30 a.m. each day.
MICHAEL WILDES, lawyer of bombing suspect Hani Abdel Rahim Hussein al-Sayegh, testifies before a Congressional panel. Al-Sayegh allegedly drove a car that signaled a bomb-laden truck when to pull alongside a complex housing U.S. servicemen in Saudi Arabia in June 1996. The bomb blast killed 19 airmen.
Photo courtesy of M. Wildes
“I'm impassioned on their behalf to see that justice is served,” said Wildes, a partner since 1996 at the Manhattan law firm of Wildes & Weinberg, which was founded by his father, Leon Wildes. It was this sense of justice that led him to help Petya Petrov, whose three children were kidnapped to Syria by her husband. Wildes helped her free of charge.
“I was very lucky to get to know Mr. Wildes,” said the children's mother, Petya Petrov. “It was the happiest thing when they returned.”
Petrov's husband, Viktor, took the children to Syria, leaving a note saying he was going to Great Adventure. Viktor Petrov allegedly had his parents hold the children hostage in Syria while he returned to the United States, making demands that his wife let him manage all of her income except $5 per day. He also insisted that she find him a job as a medical resident, and that she not make long distance phone calls, use the Internet, or meet friends, she said.
“She realized he was blackmailing her,” Wildes said. “Most people do not come back to the United States after they kidnap their kids.” <
Wildes helped secure the children's return to their mother by negotiating with Syrian officials to obtain custody and worked to get their father charged in a complaint under the International Parental Kidnapping Act of 1993, which he helped to pass.
“This sends a very strong message that the government will prosecute these cases,” said Wildes, a tireless self-promoter who testified this year before a congressional subcommittee on terrorism.
Several years ago, Wildes helped to secure asylum for a former Saudi diplomat to the United Nations whose life was being threatened.
Mohammed Khilewi, who had been the No. 2 man at the Saudi Arabian Mission, was made the target of a terror squad that meant to kidnap him and return him to his native land.
Khilewi had made allegations that the Saudi government was planning to assassinate Washington diplomats and had bugged the offices of the Jewish Defense League.
Under the protection of the Capitol Police and wearing flak jackets, Wildes and the former ambassador went to Washington, where they spoke with congressional leaders about Khilewi's need for asylum.
Asylum was granted, and more than 14,000 documents that supported Khilewi's allegations were turned over to the FBI. His claims are under investigation.
“I consider him a friend more than just a lawyer,” said Khilewi, who lives in a secure location and still travels under armed guard. “My case was very sensitive. I had to trust him all the way in everything. He's really a professional in his field. In immigration, I believe he is No. 1.”
Although he has received accolades for his work on these and other similar cases, the notoriety does come with a price: His life has been threatened several times.
In some respects, danger is not new to Wildes, who spent 10 years as an auxiliary police officer for the New York City Police Department. He is licensed to carry a firearm in several states.
Wildes, who was born in Manhattan on Nov. 22, 1964, spent most of his life in Queens, where he lived until 1995, before moving to Englewood.
In elementary school, he would go to his father's immigration law office and cut paper for use as scrap for the lawyers. As a reward, he was given a “big, fat law book” to read.
“I grew up always with immigration on my mind,” said Wildes, who was raised an Orthodox Jew. It would have been difficult to think of much else.
Wildes' father, a world-renowned expert on immigration law, started his law practice more than 30 years ago and made his name by representing a very high profile client, John Lennon. Lennon's problem was simple: U.S. law prevented him from becoming a citizen because he had a drug conviction in Great Britain.
Leon Wildes helped change the law in the Lennon case, explaining that before Lennon, anyone with a drug conviction was ineligible to come into the United States and automatically deportable if discovered here.
Pictures of Leon Wildes and John Lennon on the courthouse steps hang on the firm's office walls and can be found in its brochures. Now, the younger Wildes represents Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono.
“It's a source of pride for me that Michael ... has followed in the practice in a way that only Michael could do,” said Leon Wildes. “I've always kept a very quiet profile. Even if I had high profile clients, I never capitalized on it or promoted myself or the practice. But Michael has attracted them and done well by them and truly enhanced the practice with his personality.”
Wildes' interests go beyond immigration. As a member of the Englewood Council for the past year, he is also involved in local politics, and he volunteers for a Jewish ambulance squad in New York City — actually leaving clients in his office when he is called out on an emergency. His desire to help people is fueled by the knowledge of immigrants' struggles, in particular, those of his own family.
And Wildes' research into the difficulties his family faced when it came to the United States from Eastern Europe has made his daily work more meaningful.
“I see hundreds of passports come across my desk through the course of the year,” Wildes said. “I have a very heightened sense when I review these passports. I'm reminded that my grandfather, for all of his contributions to business in Germany, was regarded only as a Jew in the country.”
Wildes has been collecting information about his ancestors and has put together books for family members that include photocopies of his ancestors' immigration papers, passports, correspondence, and even family recipes.
The passports of his grandparents are marked with a “J” to identify them as Jewish. And just in case the J was removed, all male passports were marked with the name “Abraham,” while female passports had the name “Sara.”
Wildes said he is fascinated to learn all he can about his grandparents and great-grandparents, whom he never knew.
“There's just such a beautiful sense of family. I have what I have because of these people, who it didn't come so easy for.”
(This story was first published in 1999. Michael Wildes, a partner with the leading immigration law firm of Wildes & Weinberg, is now mayor of Englewood, New Jersey. He was first elected Mayor in November 2003 and again to a second term in November 2006.)
Why hire an immigration attorney?
Some people wonder why attorneys are the best suited to "represent" the interests of irnmigrants and visa applicants. The answers:
- Attorneys are highly educated in the law, regulated by state and federal governments and retain an attorney/client privilege of confidentiality. They can analyze the facts of your case thoroughly, explain all benefits for which you may be eligible, and recommend the best ways for you to obtain legal status;
- An attorney is neutral, so that he or she can act as a representative with the confidence, knowledge and experience that can keep a client focused upon the goal of eventually obtaining a visa or remaining in this country;
- Attorneys can lose their license to practice, when they expose the confidential information provided by a client to the Bureau of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) unless such a disclosure is in the client's best interest;
- Many non-attorneys have been accused of extorting money from immigrant applicants based upon threats to turn clients in. You have little recourse when you complain about a non-attorney, but do not be deterred from doing it. You can actually file a complaint against an attorney, where representation is not handled in an ethical manner;
- Non-attorneys have reported their customer-applicants to the USCIS when fees are not paid in full. These fees can be higher than attorney's fees, where fraud is being committed. On the other hand, if an attorney reported his client applicant, then that attorney may be regulated and penalized by the State and Federal Government. If you need assistance in locating the phone numbers of immigration lawyers near your residence, contact the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) at: (202)216-2400.
Mexican immigrant is recognized as one of ‘San Diego's best immigration lawyers'
By D. Lindquist
LILIA VELASQUEZ came from Mexico to San Diego at age 19, barely able to speak English. In two decades, she built a law practice that has brought her international recognition as an eloquent defender of immigrant rights.
Her words have rung out in South Africa, Iraq, Palestine, Israel, India, Yugoslavia, Croatia, Guatemala, Mexico and in China at the 1995 U.N. Forum on Women in Beijing.
Her activism isn't surprising. “Being female, being Latina, being an immigrant, being a person with a conscience and being a person with a law practice, it (was) almost inevitable,” she says.
From her office in downtown San Diego — pictures show her with former Attorney General Janet Reno, former President Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico, Hollywood star Edward James Olmos and her husband and two daughters — Velasquez represents 300 to 400 migrants seeking permission to reside in the United States.
Limiting the size of the practice, Velasquez says, is her major business challenge. She scaled back recently because she wants to maintain personal contact and control. “For those of us in private practice, there is no turning back,” she says. “I don't do well in institutional settings. I have an independent spirit. I need flexibility, and I need to work on my own terms.”
Beginning the business on her own in the summer of 1985 prompted some anxious moments, however.
“Like any person who has his or her own business, there's always the uncertainties,” she says. “Can you pay the rent, can you pay the staff. After five years, I realized I was set; with a steady stream of paying clients.”
She is also the Mexican Consulate's consulting attorney on immigration and teaches at California Western School of Law, where she has taken on additional responsibilities as a full professor.
Velazquez doesn't “see anything extraordinary” about her accomplishments. “These are things I wanted to do,” she says.
Others, however, consider Velazquez a person of uncommon achievements and abilities.
Candace Carroll, the immediate past president of the San Diego Bar Association, says Velasquez volunteered to train lawyers drafted in the 1980s to help handle an influx of cases involving migrants from war-torn El Salvador and Guatemala.
“She's one of the two or three best immigration lawyers in San Diego,” Carroll says. “She's absolutely committed to the plight of immigrants ... She's a real role model, not only for Latinas but all women.”
Velasquez graduated from San Diego State University with distinction, after overcoming language and cultural barriers and becoming “like anybody else” after her arrival from Mexico.
She turned to law after working with lawyers and law students in a family counseling program. “I wanted to be where the final decision was made,” she says. “I've been an immigrant for so long, I just have an affinity with immigrants,” she says. “I think they feel more confident with the fact I'm their lawyer. I instill in them a feeling of trust and confidence.”
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