jose M. perez
Since becoming a Maryland barred attorney in 2014, Jose Perez has represented hundreds of clients in a variety of immigration matters, including matters before Federal Immigration Courts across the country, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the U.S. Department of State and other government agencies. Perez received his Juris Doctor from the University of Baltimore School of Law in 2014, after having received a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science in 2011 from West Virginia University in Morgantown, WV.
Jose was born in Puerto Rico, and moved to the States when he was five. His perspective on immigration was influenced by the experience of entering a new country with a new language and culture. He grew up in Montgomery County, Maryland where he encountered a diverse community of people and was first exposed to immigration issues through his friends and neighbors. Seeing the challenges that came with immigration, he decided that he’d find a way to help.
A 2010 mission trip to Honduras gave Perez a firsthand look at the extreme living conditions that caused many people to leave their countries—poverty, gangs, and an overall lack of hope. He visited local orphanages, centers for abused teenage girls, and juvenile prisons that held gang members as young as nine years old. Witnessing this state of a community, and of a country, inspired him to become an immigration attorney.
After returning from Honduras, Jose decided to enroll in law school at the University of Baltimore School of Law. While there, Perez participated in the school’s Immigrant Rights Clinic during his 2L and 3L years, where he worked on a number of immigration cases as a Rule 16 Student Attorney, including winning a claim of Asylum for a transgender woman from Honduras. The story behind the case went on to be featured in The Daily Record.
After law school, Perez worked with the Capital Area Immigrant Rights Coalition, a nonprofit in Washington, D.C., working with detained Immigrant Children in the D.C., Maryland, and Virginia area.
Jose then began his career in private practice as an associate attorney in 2015 with a small law firm in Frederick, Maryland. In 2018, he opened his own practice, and he now specializes in a broad spectrum of immigration issues. His focus is primarily on asylum law, representation of clients in removal proceedings, and family-based immigration.
As an immigration attorney in Frederick, Maryland, Jose now works to assist those people seeking a safer, better life from the dire conditions they came from. He gets great satisfaction from helping immigrants acclimate to a new home, language, and culture. Though immigration is an incredibly complex branch of law, it is a truly rewarding and humbling experience to bring hope to those seeking a better way of life.
Jose lives in Frederick, Maryland with his wife Katelyn, and their three children, Isabella, Elijah Felix, and Madelyn. In his free time, he enjoys traveling, cooking, trying new cuisines, being active, and spending time with his family.
“For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes. He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing. And you are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt.”
