The traditional career path for a prosecutor who rises quickly is to keep rising. You make a trial supervisor. You try the big cases. You eventually either move into upper management. Some become judges. Stephanie McClure was well-positioned for any version of that arc. She had become the youngest trial supervisor in her office, handling the most serious criminal caseload available, and had the kind of trial record that translates well on a résumé. The judiciary considered her a standout, and rumblings about whether she would be interested in a judicial appointment could be heard in the hallways and at meetings of various bars and committees. That career would have been a satisfying one in part; McClure, as a devout Christian, no doubt cherished the opportunity to be a voice for the victimized. The career would also have been safe: a planned, steady retirement, a judiciary that knows and loves her, a jurisdiction that recognizes her as an expert. Most would have stayed put. McClure had other ideas and started a law firm of her own in a corner of practice that most of her peers were actively avoiding.
Crimmigration, the legal area she chose, deals with what happens when a noncitizen’s criminal history triggers immigration consequences. It is procedurally demanding, emotionally heavy, and built on timelines that punish delay. The clients tend to arrive already in ICE detention, with old convictions on their records and shrinking windows to do anything about them. Most removal defense attorneys, criminal defense attorneys, and affirmative immigration lawyers look at those files and see a losing proposition. Clients are routinely told of the “impossibility” of what they’re hoping to achieve. McClure saw a practice that nobody else was building and built it nationally to accommodate the unique needs and challenges that immigration lawyers and their clients face
“I don’t take easy cases,” she says. “I take the ones where something went wrong, and fix it.”
Reading the Market
What she recognized, before it became widely understood in the profession, was that there was an entire population of people sitting in immigration detention or at risk of deportation whose cases would turn on flawed criminal proceedings that could be reopened. The constitutional framework for reopening cases has been around long before, the seminal case of Padilla v. Kentucky in 2010, which held that defense lawyers must advise noncitizen clients about deportation risk before a guilty plea. But the population of people who had taken pleas without correct advice already existed, and the need for someone who could navigate both the criminal and immigration systems simultaneously was immediate.
McClure had been building that exact expertise for years before Padilla gave it a constitutional name. Her prosecutorial background meant she understood criminal procedure from the inside. Her move into crimmigration meant she was already fluent in the immigration side. When the caseload arrived, she was ready for it, with systems, a mastery of legal substantive bodies of law, and a nationwide network ready to be marshaled into any court. McClure, herself, is licensed in New York, New Jersey, California, and Massachusetts, is also licensed in Federal Courts around the country, including Illinois, Missouri, the First, Second, and Third Circuits, and has practiced in nearly every major city in the United States.
“With crimmigration, I saw the need to establish a national platform immediately and built that as a foundation of the firm, which allows us to give immigration lawyers a reliable resource for their clients.” With known and proven track record of success across the country, an immigration lawyer from Florida, for example, may have a client with a conviction in California, is in custody in New York, and has a removal action pending in Boston, can rely on the multi-jurisdictional aspect of the firm to work in conjunction with the immigration lawyer to address the conviction and even a habeas in two separate jurisdictions simultaneously. The immigration “team,” as McClure calls it, “works together seamlessly between my firm and the immigration lawyers.”
The market validated her bet in the way markets usually do: by sending her work. Defense attorneys and immigration lawyers who hit the wall where the two systems overlap started passing her name along. Today, she is consulted by attorneys across the country on a daily basis. They have her cell phone number and use it. Asked about the timeliness of her firm’s operational and substantive specialty, given the current immigration crisis, she said, “I created a foundation long ago and really mastered a substantive specialty to serve a certain client population. So, as the industry changed since COVID, legally, procedurally, and as the current politics took shape, I saw the need for this firm opening up like a football player might read the lineup of a certain offense.” In other words, she saw it coming and had already prepared for it years prior.
Two Cases That Explain the Practice
One of her well-known cases involved a man who had taken a drug plea twenty-five years earlier on counsel’s assurance that it would carry no immigration consequences. After decades of marriage and family life in the United States, the plea surfaced when he applied for lawful status, and he was placed into removal proceedings. Multiple firms declined the case.McClure challenged the conviction on constitutional grounds and obtained prosecutorial cooperation- no small feat. When her client was erroneously taken into custody outside the courthouse after a conference, she sprang into action, found the prosecutor, and stopped the bus before it left. “I’ve never had to pull someone off a prison bus, but in this case, it was critical, even one day in jail accidentally would have subjected my client to deportation catastrophe. He would have been deported immediately since a final order of removal already existed from years prior. We worked with an emergent duty judge after-hours to literally hold the bus of prisoners and actually get my guy taken off.” The conviction was vacated the following week. The judge apologized in open court for the scare. Today, he is a citizen of the United States.
A second case captures the timeline pressure when she is used in an “in case of emergency break glass” type situation. A domestic violence survivor who had been arrested alongside her husband during a drug investigation circa 2011 and had accepted a plea deal on bad legal advice. Fifteen years later, she found herself in ICE custody with a final removal order and a flight scheduled for the next morning. McClure obtained an emergency hearing, challenged the underlying conviction, and got a vacatur Order literally the night before the morning flight departed.
The Second Venture
The founder instinct has carried into a second business. Alongside partner Rebecca Eagleson, McClure co-founded Sid Moses, an immigration-focused agency that works with international artists and creatives to build legitimate, merit-based visa pathways into the United States. The venture grew out of frustration with the résumé-padding practices that have become standard in parts of the visa industry, and it operates on a principle that is recognizably the same one behind the law practice: do it correctly the first time, even when the shortcut is available. It operates on the same platform as her law firm, essentially setting a platform of clear credentials for an immigration lawyer to build upon.
“There’s a right way to do this,” she says, “and it actually sets artists up for long-term success, as well as industry success.” Sid Moses provides everything from petitioner services to placement in legitimate Fashion Week runways around the world for artists and fashion designers, especially. With international relationships at their fingertips, shows in Milan, Paris, London, Tokyo, Vancouver, and more, and many media relationships, Sid Moses works within an immigration lawyer’s plan for his or her client and fills in resume gaps with legitimate events, media, or other lacking credentials in order to ensure visa success. McClure can boast a 100% success rate of achievement for artists she’s developed over the last 10 years who have followed her program.
McClure’s dedication to doing things the right and honest way has been recognized by courts, judges, and peers. She holds one of the roughly 250 Certified Criminal Trial Attorney designations granted by the New Jersey Supreme Court, covering less than 1 percent of the state’s bar, and is the only woman in private practice in her region with the certification. In 2025, she received the Excellence in Pro Bono Service Award after being nominated by sitting judges, and in 2024, again was honored by sitting judiciary for excellence in working with clients living with severe mental illness. She was also judicially nominated and appointed to serve on New Jersey’s Office of Attorney Ethics.
She brings an element into her work that she is straightforward about: her faith. She is openly Christian, prays and fasts alongside clients, and has a line about it that she delivers with what sounds like genuine amusement. “Jesus is the 100 percent owner of my firm. He only takes 10 percent, though. What a partner.”
