Attorney Profiles

DAVID B. GARDNER, FOUNDER

David B. Gardner has more than 30 years professional legal experience advising  clients on US  Immigration, International Business and Taxation matters. Mr. Gardner was admitted as a Solicitor in England and Wales in 1974, and as a Solicitor in Hong Kong in 1984. He became a member of the California Bar in 1979 and is admitted to the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California and to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He graduated from the University of Sussex, in England with a  Bachelors’ degree in Law, with honors in 1974.  He completed graduate studies at Northrop University, California (now University of West Los Angeles), with a Masters degree in Taxation in 1980 and subsequently taught at Northrop University as an Adjunct Professor of International Taxation. He is the author of: "IRS, INS and Foreign Entertainers," Hastings Law Review, Summer, 1983 and has written numerous articles and spoken on immigration law and practice. He founded the Law Offices of David B. Gardner in 1985 as an international law practice  and since 1996, following a  law firm merger, has practiced exclusively in the areas of Immigration and Nationality Law.

Mr. Gardner is Certified by the State Bar of California as a specialist in Immigration and Nationality Law. He represents clients in all types of immigration cases before Agencies of the Department of Homeland Security, the Executive Office for Immigration Review and in the Federal District Courts and Circuit Courts of Appeal. He was lead counsel in Vukmirovic v. Ashcroft, 362 F. 3d 1247(9th Cir. 2004). and Vukimorivic v Holder (9^th Cir Sept 2010).

Mr. Gardner was co-founder of several non for profit organizations including the Spirit of Youth foundation (an exchange program between under-privileged youth from Los Angeles and in the United Kingdom); the California Israel Chamber of Commerce and the Southern California Israel Chamber of Commerce. He was awarded the honor of Cavillieri by the Government of Italy for legal services on behalf of the Italian Consulate in Los Angeles. He is a past president of Bnai David Judea Congregation in Los Angeles and  continues to be active in a variety of local and international community organizations.

Fatma E. Marouf, Attorney at Law

Fatma E. Marouf graduated magna cum laude from Yale University and received her J.D. with honors from Harvard Law School, where she served as an Executive Editor of the Human Rights Journal and a Senior Editor of the International Law Journal. During law school, Fatma worked as an Equal Justice Fellow at Hale and Dorr Legal Services Center and received a Chayes International Fellowship to work with the World Bank’s Corruption and Fraud Investigations Unit in Washington, DC. She also helped organize an international conference on “Sexual Rites, Human Rights,” which explored the ways in which sexuality is implicated in many of the major rights struggles of our times.

Prior to practicing immigration law, Fatma clerked for the Honorable Consuelo B. Marshall, then Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the Central District of California, and worked for two years as a lawyer with California Rural Legal Assistance in Stockton, CA, where she advocated for the rights of low income people in housing, education and public benefits. One of the major cases she worked on was Price v. City of Stockton, which succeeded in obtaining relocation assistance for hundreds of displaced people and helped protect numerous low income residential units from extinction. 

Fatma has now been appointed as Professor to the Faculty of University of Las Vegas Nevada where she is responsible for teaching Immigration and International Human Rights Law  and oversees training of law students at the  School’s Legal Clinic. She continues to practice in an advisory capacity as Of Counsel to the AmericanImmigrationLaw Group exclusively in the areas of immigration and nationality law. She is particularly interested in immigration law’s intersection with constitutional and criminal law, and has handled numerous cases involving issues such as the retroactive application of immigration laws and administrative decisions, the sweeping definitions of “terrorist activity,” and the deportation of permanent residents based on old criminal convictions.  As an impassioned advocate of women’s rights, Fatma has also handled many asylum cases involving persecution based on gender, sexual orientation, and female genital cutting (FGM). She has significant appellate experience representing clients before the Board of Immigration Appeals and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

In addition, Fatma has worked with refugee and migrant populations abroad.  She spent several months with a human rights organization in the West Bank researching water problems facing Palestinian refugees and the issue of settlements. She also worked on a joint project with the Legal Resources Centre in Ghana around access to health care and sanitation in an impoverished migrant community. The project challenged the user fee system of health care and its impact on the poor.

Fatma volunteers on the Board of the Highlander Research and Education Center in New Market, TN, an organization that acts as a catalyst for grassroots organizing and movement building in Appalachia and the Southern part of the United States. Highlander is currently doing cutting edge work building bridges and developing leadership among immigrant communities.

Fatma is of Turkish-Egyptian origin. She is a member of the California Bar, the American Bar Association, the Los Angeles County Bar Association, and the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

Allisson Ramirez, Attorney at Law

Ms. Ramirez first joined The Law Offices of David B. Gardner, Inc. in August 1999, as a Legal Assistant, while attending graduate school at the University of California Los Angeles, where she studied Latin American Studies. She studied Mass Communications and Journalism at California State University, Fresno. Ms. Ramirez obtained her Juris Doctor from Abraham Lincoln University, School of Law in Los Angeles, California.

Ms. Ramirez is passionate and dedicated to the immigration field. She genuinely understands, and can personally relate to the immigration process, as an immigrant to the United States herself. Ms. Ramirez was born and raised in Honduras, Central America.

Ms. Ramirez has experience in drafting and preparing a wide range of immigration documents for filing with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and other Government entities, including applications for business and non-immigrant visa petitions (H-1B, O and P visas, TN, L, R, student visas, and E visas), visa waivers, asylum, naturalization, and applications for labor certification applications (PERM), as well as immigrant family and employment-based visa petitions (such as I-130, I-140, I-360, I-751, and I-526).

Ms. Ramirez is an active member of the State Bar of California, admitted to practice law before the Supreme Court of the State of California and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. She also represents clients in removal and deportation proceedings before the Immigration Court (EOIR) and the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA). She is fluent in Spanish, with basic knowledge of French.

Ms. Ramirez is a member of the American Immigration Lawyer's Association ("AILA"), the Los Angeles Country Bar Association ("LACBA"), and the Beverly Hills Bar Association ("BHBA").