Alan Rodolfo Diamante was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. His mother was a union activist, and his father was a blue-collar worker from Argentina. Mr. Diamante attended and graduated with honors from U.C. Berkeley where he found solidarity with other Latino students who learned to transform their acute awareness of social inequality and injustice into activism. This activism led to a passion for civil rights defense. His empathy for immigrants grew in college when he gained first-hand experience of a foreigner’s plight in a strange land while studying abroad in Guildford, England. After discovering his financial aid had been cancelled, he was given a choice to give up his dream of studying abroad or stay and find work as his parents could not financially assist him. He chose to stay and finish his classes when a Colombian expat, one of the few Latinos in town, reassured him it would be easy to find employment in England. Among many jobs, he washed dishes in the only Chinese restaurant in Guildford.  He would ride his bike home in the midnight drizzle after each shift.

 

After graduating, he attended Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. The 1994 passage of Proposition 187, the California state initiative to prohibit undocumented immigrants from using public healthcare and education, sparked outrage on campus. He and other fellow La Raza students took to the streets and participated in demonstrations against what seemed to be a racist and unconstitutional referendum. This experience crystalized his desire to further represent voiceless and vulnerable immigrants.

 

In 1995 he  was admitted to the California state bar. In 2000, on behalf of U.S. NGO, Casa Nicaragua, he met with President Daniel Ortega and U.S. State Department officials in Nicaragua to secure the necessary travel documentation of children to be reunited with their parents in the U.S. before the sunsetting of section 202 of the Nicaraguan and Central American Relief Act (NACARA).

 

In 2002, he gained public notoriety when he successfully defended Alex Sanchez, a Salvadoran former gang-member turned activist in his asylum case, pro bono. Just a year after the September 11 terrorist attack, Mr. Sanchez was nearly deported because he was outspoken against the LAPD, Rampart Division corruption. LAPD had delivered him to the immigration authorities for deportation in violation of Los Angeles Special order 40, a police mandate implemented in 1979 by LAPD and the L.A City Council preventing police officers from questioning people for the  purpose of determining their immigration status.

 

This story shed light on the human rights violations in both the U.S. and Central America. Mr. Sanchez’s story was featured in the late Senator Tom Hayden’s book, Street Wars,  and in the documentary, Fruits of War. Since winning his asylum case, Mr. Sanchez continues to support the immigrant community as the current executive director of Homies Unidos, a Los Angeles based non-profit organization. MABA awarded  Mr. Diamante with the “Attorney of Year” award in 2003 for his representation of Alex Sanchez

 

Mr. Diamante was also petitioner’s counsel in the Ninth Circuit matter of Galeana-Mendoza v. Gonzales, 465 F.3d 1054 (9th Cir. 2006). In that case, the court ruled that a conviction of domestic battery is not a crime of violence nor a crime involving moral turpitude. After the decision, criminal defense attorneys could seek to have their clients plead to domesticbattery as an alternative to corporal injury on a spouse to avoid severe immigration consequences.Mr. Diamante was also co-counsel in Hootkins v. Napolitano, 645 F. Supp. 2d 856, 858 (N.D. Cal. 2009) a class action holding that the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) summary revocations of spouse-based petitions of widows married less than two years were invalid under the Ninth and Sixth Circuits. The publicity behind this lawsuit motivated the DHS to change its regulations in 2009 and triggered a favorable change in the law by Congress and President Obama. On October 28, 2009, President Obama signed into law the FY10 DHS Appropriations Act (P.L. 111-83), which included a provision eliminating the requirement that the surviving spouse of a U.S. citizen be married for two years prior to the death in order to self-petition for permanent lawful status. Moreover, the law created section 204(l) of the Immigration and Nationality Act to protect and expand the rights of surviving beneficiaries and derivatives (not only spouses) of certain approved or pending family petitions. The new provisions created after the Hootkins decision might be the only pro-immigrant legislation passed under the Obama administration.

 

In 2017, Mr. Diamante took on the case of Romulo Avelica-Gonzalez, pro bono.  The legal team thwarted Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s (ICE) efforts to immediately deport a father while he was dropping off his 13-year-old daughter, Fatima, at school. Fatima’s cell phone video of her father’s arrest went viral online and brought a community together, attracting worldwide attention to the Trump administration’s harsh, inhumane immigration policies.  Mr. Avelica-Gonzalez’s removal order was ultimately vacated, and he was reunited with his family six months after his arrest. Many newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times and the National Geographic, featured Romulo’s and Fatima’s story.  Today, Fatima knows she and her family have a future in the U.S. and is considering a career as an immigration attorney. The Avelica-Gonzalez case represents another story in the emerging social movement in the U.S. to protect immigrants from the excessively repressive and discriminatory enforcement of immigration laws.

 

Mr. Diamante’s latest victory came in 2022 when he obtained another grant from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. In Muñoz v. DOS, 50 F. 4th 906 (9th Circuit), the court held that the doctrine of consular non-reviewability does not apply if the Department of State does not provide a timely facially legitimate reason for denying a permanent visa. The doctrine of consular non-reviewability prevents judicial review of consular decisions and has long been used by consulate officials to deny immigrants without due process. The decision in Muñoz recognizes a United States citizen’s right to have her spouse’s application properly adjudicated and has the potential to impact thousands of lives worldwide by ensuring that the rights of U.S. citizens are upheld during the adjudication of their spouses’ visa applications.

Although being disabled with Multiple Sclerosis,  Mr. Diamante remains dedicated to defending the legal protections of immigrants and assuring dignity for all people.  He currently resides with his wife Nerina and young daughter Luna in Glendale