Matthew Borowski
Matthew Borowski’s intimate understanding of the immigration system helped him win a high-profile asylum case with national impact.
For Matthew Borowski, 34, the effort to secure legal rights for immigrants to this country is a very personal one.
“Both of my parents were immigrants. My father was actually a refugee from Poland during the Communist era — he was something of a political dissident,” says Borowski, JD ’12. “My mom was born in Iran and she immigrated to the United States in the 1970s. So immigration was always a topic that was near and dear to me.”
In his Buffalo, New York-based law practice, Borowski has applied himself to the complex needs of immigrants caught up in the legal system.
He gained some national recognition for successfully representing Noorullah Aminyar, an Afghan Army captain who had aided U.S. forces but was being denied asylum here. The case, which was the subject of a 6,300-word feature in Esquire last summer, was especially complex because of the challenging and often capricious environment that surrounds immigration statutes.
“The takeaway from that case is that, especially when it comes to asylum, it is all very amorphous, the application of the laws and precedents,” he says. “It is really tough to distill this stuff into a clear recitation of the law. Immigration judges have a lot of discretion in how they can interpret the factual circumstances. A lot of it is up to who you have as your judge.”
If you think that makes immigration law sound arbitrary, you’re right. “My singular issue on appeal was that this was arbitrary,” Borowski says. Faced with near-identical circumstances for two defendants, an immigration board reached two opposite conclusions. He argued that that is not how the law is supposed to work, and he won.
Borowski understood even before he came to Drexel that the law isn’t always applied correctly or fairly. He’d been wrongly accused in Virginia, and that helped to set him on his present course. “It taught me that if you are willing to stick to your guns and take your case to trial, and if you have the money to hire good counsel, you can prevail,” he says. “It also showed me that there is an immense amount of pressure on criminal defendants to plead guilty.”
His coursework at Drexel helped him to take his ideals and give them practical application. “Drexel had an excellent set of practical courses taught by adjunct faculty, including the immigration litigation course, which was a fantastic introduction to the things that I do on a daily basis now. Having a seasoned practitioner teach that course was an excellent choice,” he says.
While he’s fighting the battle today, Borowski is thinking about the future and how his work could impact immigration rights in the long term. “It is in the United States’ interest to attract the best and brightest to this country,” he says. — Adam Stone
