Brian J. Hoffman

Brian grew up on a farm in rural northeast Ohio and studied Spanish from kindergarten through high school, followed by four months at the University of Alcalá de Henares, near Madrid, Spain. He spent his junior year of college studying Japanese at Kansai Gaidai University in Osaka, Japan. Upon his return, Brian worked as a translator, interpreter and teacher of English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) for a northeast Ohio-based community organization focused on education and advocacy on behalf of Ohio’s rural Latino/a communities. He earned his bachelor’s degree in political science with a minor in East Asian studies from Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania, and his law degree from the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. Brian served for a year in the administration of Ohio Governor Ted Strickland before forming his own translation, interpretation, and legal services firm in 2012.

In August 2014 Brian traveled to the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Artesia, New Mexico, to lend assistance during the at that time unprecedented influx of Central American families and unaccompanied children arriving at the US-Mexico border. He then resigned his firm and moved to Dilley, Texas, to represent the immigrants detained in the South Texas Family Residential Center. Brian Hoffman is the former Lead Attorney for the CARA Family Detention Pro Bono Project, an organization committed to ensuring that detained children and their mothers receive competent, pro bono representation, and developing aggressive, effective advocacy and litigation strategies to end the practice of family detention.