Karen Hoffmann

Karen Hoffmann is a Senior Attorney in Murray Osorio's Philadelphia office, where she represents immigrants and their families in removal defense, asylum, humanitarian relief, and family-based immigration matters before the immigration courts, USCIS, the Board of Immigration Appeals, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. She represents clients in Spanish and Portuguese.

Before joining Murray Osorio in 2026, Karen built a Philadelphia-based immigration practice serving hundreds of clients from more than a dozen countries, with deep roots in the region's Brazilian, Hispanic, and African communities. Her work has included defensive and affirmative asylum, Special Immigrant Juvenile Status and related state custody proceedings, protection for survivors of crime and trafficking, and federal habeas corpus petitions on behalf of detained clients.

In collaboration with Aldea – The People's Justice Center, Karen helped establish precedential Third Circuit asylum law on past persecution in Herrera-Reyes v. Attorney General (2020), and represented families detained at the Berks County facility. Her team received the 2019 Pro Bono Award from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois for litigation to reunite families separated at the border.

Prior to law, Karen worked as a journalist covering human rights and the environment in Latin America and the Caribbean, with reporting published in The Guardian, Earth Island Journal, and The Ecologist.

Karen earned her J.D. from Temple University Beasley School of Law and her B.A. from Carnegie Mellon University. She is admitted to practice in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, before the U.S. District Courts for the Eastern, Middle, and Western Districts of Pennsylvania and the District of New Jersey, and before the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.

Education

• Temple University Beasley School of Law, J.D. 
• Carnegie Mellon University, B.A.

Bar Admissions

• Pennsylvania
• New Jersey
• U.S. District Court – Eastern District of Pennsylvania
• U.S. District Court – Middle District of Pennsylvania
• U.S. District Court – Western District of Pennsylvania
• U.S. District Court – District of New Jersey
• Third Circuit, U.S. Court of Appeals

Memberships

• American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA)
• Pennsylvania Bar Association
• New Jersey State Bar Association

Awards/Recognitions

• Super Lawyers® Rising Stars, 2024–2026
• 2019 Pro Bono Award from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois

Languages

• Spanish
• Portuguese