Curbelo’s Kids

If Carolina Curbelo had been better at math, she might not be a lawyer.

And if her parents hadn’t immigrated to the U.S., there might have been no one to help the young Nigerian boy who learned to play chess in a New York City homeless shelter and was at risk of being harmed by the terrorist group Boko Haram. Instead, he’s on track to become one of the youngest grandmasters ever.

And if another kid hadn’t convinced her she should become an immigration attorney—though at one point she’d pretty much decided, law degree notwithstanding, she “wasn’t feeling the law”—we’d be telling a different story right now.

Curbelo’s mother and father came from Cuba as children, separately, brought by their own parents, who were fleeing the Castro regime. They met in New Jersey, married, and when Carolina came along, the couple—both accountants—believed their eldest should be a doctor, an engineer or a lawyer.
“Off the bat they realized that I was not very good at math,” she says. “So they scratched out doctor and engineer.”

But she had a way with words.

“I knew early on that the courtroom was going to be where I wanted to be. I really wanted to do that. Always, since I was a child, even into high school. I did mock
trial. I did debate. I was a captain of the debate team.”

She majored in poli sci at Rutgers University, then headed to Vermont Law School, thinking her path lay in
environmental law, working for “Exxon or a similar company.”

That idea faded fast. Her conservative values clashed with those of her more liberal classmates. “They sort of kicked it out of me,” she says.

After law school, watching attorneys argue civil matters while she clerked for a superior court judge brought disillusionment. A stint doing legal marketing and e-discovery as a paralegal at a law firm also failed to inspire.

And life got in the way. Her beloved aunt died. She got married, started raising stepchildren, had kids of her own, and struggled to pay off her student loans. In the midst of it all, she unsuccessfully took the Bar a couple of times, and decided to take a break from the law. “I said, ‘You know what, let me figure out something.’”

She went to work for the state Department of Labor and Workforce Development, as an appeals examiner in the unemployment division.

In 2010, she gave the Bar another try and passed. She decided to take a pro bono case involving a teenager from Guatemala. “It’s hard for an asylum officer to understand what it’s like to be a young man that is perceived gay in a country that is very homophobic, machista,” she says.

“I sort of channeled the experiences that my grandmothers told me about, about how different it is to come from one country to another. I just fell in love with the work right then and there—working on that child’s file. Today, he’s on his way to become a U.S. citizen.”

She opened her practice in Ridgewood, just a few miles from where she grew up and still lives, handling a variety of immigration matters—from naturalization and asylum applications to humanitarian visas for victims of domestic violence and human trafficking.

She also handles real estate. That, she says, “stemmed from, mostly, my immigration clients. Once I get my clients their papers, they trust me to help them with the next part of the American dream, which is owning a home.”

But kids, she says, are at the heart of her practice.

“I represent a lot of unaccompanied children coming across the border. That’s where the soft spot for me is,” she says. “I tell them that they’re my kids in a sense, because I always follow them and I always check in with them.

“They come back to me and they ask me, ‘Abogada, where should I go to school?’ Or ‘Should I join the military?’ I like to have that connection with my younger clients. I really am rooting for them.”

In 2017, Tani Adewumi, age 6, fled Nigeria with his Christian family after Boko Haram members threatened them. Two years later, in the U.S., they feared what might happen if they were sent back. Curbelo took on the case in 2019, pro bono.

“She took us as her brothers and sisters,” says Tani’s father, Kayode Adewumi. “Without taking any penny, without taking any dollar. … The only thing that I can say is she has human feelings. She has grit. And she has love.”

The case got nationwide attention.

Tani is a bona fide chess prodigy. He went from never having played the game to becoming New York state champion in just over a year, while living with his family in a shelter.
A teacher introduced him to chess, and he practiced on the shelter floor for hours every night.
Two years after winning state, he became a national master; a few months later, an International Chess Federation (FIDE) master.

And now, at 14, Tani’s within striking distance of international master status and well on the way to becoming a grandmaster, the game’s highest ranking.
If it sounds like a movie, you’re right. Trevor Noah’s production company is working on it right now. But that didn’t make his asylum case any easier.

It took Curbelo three years, with a pro bono assist toward the end from international law firm Mayer Brown, to win asylum for the family.

“It’s very hard, to be honest, for a solo practitioner, especially pro bono, to go up against DHS on a case like this,” she says. “I needed the resources that a bigger law firm could provide.”

Christopher Mikesh, a Mayer Brown attorney on the case, says Curbelo’s effort and experience were key.
“She worked tirelessly,” he says. “She really brought a depth of knowledge and experience about navigating the immigration system that was invaluable. We’re a large law firm, and we have many experts in immigration and asylum cases, but Carolina had a personal connection with a lot of the immigration judges and a lot of the immigration court procedures.”

Last October, two years after they were granted asylum and a full five years after she took their case, the family got their green cards.

“I just try to make sure my clients are happy,” Curbelo says. “I can’t guarantee results, but I do the best that I can. And, you know, I hope I’ve been able to change people’s lives for the better.”

She’s glad she found her way back to law.

“I hope I inspire younger people—whether they fail the bar exam or they feel like they don’t know what they’re going to do in life,” she says. “Somehow, you find a way. And sometimes your clients lead you to that path.”