Person

Sarah Gillman

Director of Strategic U.S. Litigation

Sarah has extensive experience defending detained noncitizens in proceedings before the Executive Office of Immigration Review and in the federal courts, beginning in 2007 as a staff attorney with the Legal Aid Society’s Immigration Law Unit. In 2019, she co-founded the Rapid Defense Network, a legal nonprofit created to use strategic litigation to defend individuals facing detention and deportation. Sarah is the proud granddaughter of her maternal grandfather who was Armenian and paternal grandfather whose family fled from Lithuania as a result of pogroms against the Jewish people. Sarah’s grandfathers both came to the United States to seek safety and stayed for the remainder of their lives.

Sarah is a graduate of Earlham College and CUNY School of Law. She is a member of the New York State Bar and is admitted to practice before the U.S. District Courts for the Southern, Eastern, and Western Districts of New York, and the District of Columbia; and the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Second Circuit, the Third Circuit, the Fourth Circuit, the Fifth Circuit, the Ninth Circuit, the Eleventh Circuit, and the D.C. Circuit. She has also served as an Adjunct Professor of Law at New York University School of Law, Washington Square Legal Services, where she taught the Immigrant and Advanced Rights Clinics.

New year, new us. Same mission.

Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights is rebranding to honor the legacy of our founder and hero, Mrs. Ethel Skakel Kennedy. From now on, we will proudly be known as the Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center

While our name is changing, our mission and work remain the same. We will continue to fight injustice, advance human rights, and hold governments accountable around the world in 2026 and beyond.