Keisha Hudson, Philadelphia’s Chief Public Defender, was a teenager in 1992 when she left her seaside village of Savanna-la-Mar in Jamaica for the U.S. She came to join her mother, a nurse who had been recruited a few years earlier by Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx. The elder Hudson was following a time-honored path carved by generations of Jamaican professionals who, seeking to improve their family’s economic situation, had made the same pilgrimage, often attracted by American companies struggling to find enough good workers.
Given her experience, Hudson knows that so much of today’s messaging about immigrants is simply false. “This idea that you have people jumping a wall and then flooding in our borders is a narrative that is not true,” Hudson says.“People get here in a variety of ways, and the majority of people who get here are following the law.”
With her own experience anchoring her understanding of the complex legal system non-citizens encounter — and after more than a year of tirelessly raising funds and support — Hudson recently announced that the Defender Association of Philadelphia has created a dedicated Immigration Law Practice with six attorneys to provide free representation to immigrants and asylum-seekers who have been detained in Philadelphia under the Trump administration’s mass deportation strategy.
Philadelphia’s public defenders have been expanding their expertise in immigration law since the Padilla v. Kentucky Supreme Court decision in 2010 determined that criminal defense attorneys are constitutionally required under the Sixth Amendment to advise non-citizen clients about the deportation consequences of a guilty plea. But with the federal government’s aggressive anti-immigration tactics, public defenders across the country are stepping up to defend non-citizens.
Hudson sees expanding her office’s role as a natural extension of public defenders’ duty to ensure that even the most vulnerable people receive their constitutional guarantee of due process.
“It is important to tell the full story of who our non-citizen clients are, particularly for many who came here fleeing destabilization, war, persecution, and climate crises in their home countries,” she says.
For her zealous defense of those in need, no matter their immigration status, Hudson is this year’s A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr., Social Justice Champion of the Year. She will be honored alongside her fellow Citizens of the Year at Fitler Club Ballroom on April 22. You can read about all of this year’s winners and get tickets and sponsorship information here.
A history of protecting marginalized communities
Hudson graduated in 2002 from Cornell University Law School, where she worked at the Death Penalty Project under two of the nation’s most distinguished legal experts on capital punishment. “My experience in the clinic left me with the certainty that I needed to use my law degree to work for and with those society has abandoned,” she told Cornell Law’s alumni magazine in 2022.
After Cornell, she took a job with the Defenders Association of Philadelphia. In 2006, she transitioned to the Federal Community Defender of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, which provides defense in federal cases; while there, Hudson carried a caseload of about 30 clients on death row in Pennsylvania and Delaware. After 16 years in that role, she took a position as Deputy Chief Public Defender and Director of Training in Montgomery County, where her advocacy for the indigent brought her into conflict with local government officials and the courts — and ultimately led to her being terminated.
At the time, Montgomery County had the third-largest public defender’s office in Pennsylvania. Hudson supervised 66 attorneys, investigators, social workers, paralegals, and support staff members, all the while battling a perennial shortage of funding. This is an ugly aspect of Pennsylvania, which ranks 45th nationally for indigent defense funding. While the landmark 1963 Supreme Court case Gideon v. Wainwright established the right of criminal defendants to legal counsel in state courts — even if they couldn’t afford it — it did not proscribe how representation would be funded or structured. Pennsylvania did not fund indigent defense until 2023, when Governor Josh Shapiro allocated $7.5 million. By comparison, Michigan, for just one example, increased spending on indigent defense services from $0 in state funding to over $258 million annually by 2025.
“My experience in the clinic left me with the certainty that I needed to use my law degree to work for and with those society has abandoned.” — Keisha Hudson
Despite this backdrop and financial constraints, Hudson managed to expand training for Montgomery County’s public defender office staff. “Any success we had in Montgomery County was a function of us working together,” says Dean Beer, who was Montgomery County’s Chief Public Defender at the time, and the person who recruited Hudson. “She’s incredibly organized and incredibly hard-working.”
In 2019, Hudson helped file an amicus brief in support of an ACLU of Pennsylvania lawsuit demanding an “end to illegal bail practices in Philadelphia.”
Hudson said they didn’t give the amicus brief much thought after the office filed it — they had filed other amicus briefs in the past without incident. But, according to a lawsuit filed by Hudson alleging First Amendment retaliation for her termination, on February 6, 2020, the then-President Judge of the Court of Common Pleas called Beer to his office to tell him that the brief should never have been filed, that it was potentially inaccurate, and that a planned pre-trial program championed by the public defenders could be cut.
Soon thereafter, a representative for the county commissioners asked Beer to withdraw the complaint; even after he did so, his position was terminated, along with Hudson’s, sparking protests and national media attention.
Despite the blowback, Hudson maintains that public defenders’ duty is to their clients. “We don’t temper our representations when we think the courts will disagree or the prosecutor will disagree or the county executive and funders will disagree,” she says.
And despite losing her job, Hudson says some good came out of it: Montgomery County now has an advisory board that selects the Chief Public Defender, provides guidance and supports efforts to make the criminal justice system more equitable. “Montgomery County is a much better place than it was when we were there,” she says.
Inspiring others to create change
In 2021, Hudson returned to where her career had begun: Philadelphia, where she was appointed Chief Public Defender by the Defender Association’s Board of Directors after a national searcn. Established in 1934 and considered by some indigent defense experts as one of the best public defenders’ offices in the state, the Defender Association is located in Center City, across the street from the Union League of Philadelphia. “Fund PA Public Defenders,” reads one of several posters on Hudson’s office door. “We can’t afford to wait.” A page ripped from a notebook above it includes a hand-drawn sketch of Hudson, and the scrawled message of an elementary student to the Chief Public Defender: “You inspire me … to create a good environment for people around the world.”
“I never turn down an opportunity to speak to students,” Hudson says from behind her desk, wearing heart-shaped earrings that read: “Fueled by feminine rage.” At the time, the girl who wrote the note didn’t seem to be listening to Hudson, but after the speech she came up and “had really fantastic questions.”
“I put that on my door to remind me how important it is to be in spaces where people may not understand what the defenders are and what public defenders do, and to hopefully inspire someone to do this work,” she says.
The six attorneys of the newly formed Immigration Law Practice is led by Lilah Thompson, an experienced immigration attorney. It builds on work that the Defender Association had already been doing with the Nationalities Service Center, a 100-year-old immigration support organization in Philly.
“It is important to tell the full story of who our non-citizen clients are, particularly for many who came here fleeing destabilization, war, persecution, and climate crises in their home countries.” — Keisha Hudson
“Once you are on American soil, there is something called due process,” Hudson says, referring to the right under which the government must act according to the rule of law — a tradition that traces back to rights issued by King John of England in 1215. “Unfortunately, there is a lack of civic education in this country. Even folks who are educated believe that unless you’re a U.S. citizen, you shouldn’t be entitled to due process.”
In part, that’s because some groups opposed to immigration have successfully created a narrative of uncertainty around whether non-citizens are actually protected. Advocates say immigrants detained in Philadelphia are often not provided with appropriate legal defense, even when they have been here for years and follow government regulations for being in the country.
One such person, a 30-year-old asylum-seeker being defended by the Immigration Law Practice, was slated for deportation despite having never had any encounters with the criminal justice system. He says that he was detained when he attended a routine check-in with immigration officials. Speaking on the condition of anonymity out of fear of being targeted by the government, he says that since 2022 he had been showing up for his check-ins without incident; but in October 2025, he was taken to an unfamiliar third floor, where he was ushered into a cell and told that he was on the path to being deported. While his family struggled to find and afford legal representation, he was sent to the Federal Detention Center in Philadelphia, then bussed in leg shackles to the Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Philipsburg.
Once there, he says he was forced to share a cell and bathroom with 78 other people from several countries, with the fluorescent lights on 24/7. He says he was lucky his family was able to connect him with a public defender, given the complexity of the immigration system. He spent 98 days in detention before being released. His public defender has filed a petition to challenge his detention.
The man said in Spanish that he was unable to afford a private attorney and was grateful for the Defender Association’s work on his behalf. But many of his fellow detainees were not so lucky; they decided that fighting their cases was not worth the money even if they could find attorneys. “In the end, what you think as an immigrant is: I’m going to spend all this money and they’re going to deport me anyway, because the government isn’t respecting immigrants’ rights,” he said.
Hudson, who has helped raise $200,000 from the Stoneleigh Foundation and secured $900,000 from the City of Philadelphia to fund the program, says most immigrants can’t possibly defend themselves without legal help. “It took me, I believe, eight or nine years to wind my way from my green card all the way to citizenship,” she says. “It’s a long process, it’s a complicated process, and it’s an expensive process.”
Her office already has 123 immigrant clients with deportation orders. Many more immigrants have been detained; by Hudson’s estimation there are about 2,440 in five different facilities, though the government hasn’t released accurate figures. She says she wants to be able to represent more and is seeking additional funds to do so.
Hudson acknowledges her office could be headed for a possible confrontation with the Trump administration. But she’s undeterred. “We cannot let fear prevent us from doing what is just and right,” she says.
SUPPORTING IMMIGRANTS AND REFUGEES IN PHILLY