Biography
Mr. Andrés López is the owner and founder of the Lopez Law Firm, PLLC, practicing in all areas of the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Law. He is a North Carolina State Bar Board Certified Specialist in Immigration Law. Being an immigrant himself, from Medellin, Colombia, Mr. López is a passionate, committed, and enthusiastic advocate, having grown up and lived in various diverse immigrant communities in the United States. He believes in helping the individuals and families achieve their unique American dreams which collectively emphasize maintaining family unity, creating businesses, obtaining education, while weaving their cultural heritages into the rich rubric of the American society. Attorney López understands and respects his clients’ desires of having a direct relationship with their attorney, and he prides himself on his accessibility and quality of work.
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Mr. Lopez has extensive experience practicing removal defense for individuals who appear before various immigration courts including the Charlotte Immigration Court, and those located in Atlanta and in Lumpkin, Georgia (Stewart Detention Center). Recently, he has appeared before various immigraiton judges at the Richmond Immigration Adjudication Center (RIAC) by webex.
Mr. Lopez has represented an asylum seeker in a case of national importance (Matter of A-B-). In 2018, the Attorney General of the United States reversed the order from the Board of Immigration Appeals that granted her asylum. Mr. Lopez assisted Ms. A.B. with the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies and others at the appellate level to seek reversal of the previous administration’s efforts at restricting asylum in the context of gender-based violence. The Attorney General under the Biden administration vacated the decision in 2021, thereby allowing Ms. A.B. to be granted asylum.
Mr. Lopez also assists individuals and families with family-based immigration strategies, including adjustment of status, provisional waivers, U Visas, special immigrant juvenile visas, and more. Additionally, he supports businesses with their employment-based immigration needs. Recently, Mr. Lopez was extensively involved from the outset in representing an immigrant minor whose petition for Special Immigrant Juvenile Status was wrongfully denied by the government. With the assistance of Attorney Brad Banias from Banias Law, LLC, Mr. Lopez successfully helped overturn the denial at the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Perez Perez v. Cuccinelli, No 18-1330 (4th Cir. 2020). The court held en banc that the government had violated immigration law by failing to apply it as written.
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He graduated from Georgetown University in 2000 with a Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service, majoring in International Economics. He received his law degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is licensed to practice law in North Carolina since 2007. He is admitted to the United States Western and Eastern District of North Carolina, as well as the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
He is a member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), where he was elected to serve a three-year term from 2024-2027 as Director on the AILA Board of Governors, which oversees AILA with a membership of nearly 17,000 immigration attorneys across the country and world. Previously, he has served as Secretary, Vice Chair, and Chapter Chair from 2017 to 2024 for the AILA Carolinas, a group of nearly 500 immigration attorneys in the Carolinas. He has also been the AILA Carolinas Chapter liaison to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Charlotte, as well as the assistant AILA liaison to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office in Charlotte. He also served on the Board of Directors for the Charlotte Center for Legal Advocacy since 2020, where he has volunteered his time with its Immigrant Outreach Project in the past. He has served as the Chair to the Mecklenburg County Bar Immigration Section and has also handled pro bono cases on behalf of other organizations such as CLINIC.