Charles “Shane” Ellison joined the Duke Law faculty in 2020 as part of the Immigrant Rights Clinic. In addition to the clinic, he teaches a course on the intersection of race and immigration policy. Ellison previously directed Creighton Law School’s Immigrant and Refugee Clinic through a collaborative partnership with the Immigrant Legal Center (ILC), where he served as legal director and lead attorney for more than nine years. During his tenure at ILC, he helped grow the organization from a four-employee office into one of the largest nonprofit immigration law firms in the Midwest.
Ellison’s advocacy work contributed to the passage of three significant legislative initiatives advancing immigrants’ rights in Nebraska: LB 623, which ensures that eligible youth within the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program can obtain a driver’s license; LB 947, which opens access to professional and commercial licenses to employment-authorized immigrants; and LB 670, which protects the ability of abused, abandoned, and neglected immigrant children to obtain the necessary state court order to seek Special Immigrant Juvenile status.
While at ILC, he also managed the impact litigation efforts of National Justice For Our Neighbors, litigating complex immigration cases and representing immigrant rights organizations through amicus briefs before the Executive Office for Immigration Review and the U.S. Courts of Appeals. Before joining ILC, he worked within USCIS’s Refugee, Asylum, and International Operations Directorate in New York.
Ellison was invited to serve on the Amicus Committee of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) from 2018 to 2024 and on the Immigration Subcommittee of National Board of Trial Advocacy (NBTA) from 2020 to 2025. His work with NBTA helped lead to the creation of an American Bar Association-accredited national certification program in immigration law, for which he earned board certification. He was also a co-recipient of the 2023 Jack Wasserman Award, given by AILA to attorneys recognized for excellence in immigration litigation.
Ellison currently chairs the Asylum Litigation Working Group. A leading scholar on asylum and refugee law, he is frequently invited to speak on the subject at national and international law conferences. His scholarship has appeared in the International Journal of Refugee Law (Oxford University Press), Michigan Law Review Online, Columbia Human Rights Law Review, Georgetown Immigration Law Journal, Creighton Law Review, and several practitioner-focused journals. He obtained his BA, magna cum laude, in philosophy from Trinity College in Deerfield, Ill., and his JD, cum laude, from Hofstra Law School.
