February 7, 2006: DHS Names Senior Advisor for Refugee and Asylum Policy

WASHINGTON- The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced today the appointment of Igor V. Timofeyev as senior advisor for refugee and asylum policy, within the new Policy Directorate. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff called for this senior policy position as part of his six-point agenda for the department, outlined last summer following a Second Stage Review of DHS policies, operations and organization.

“The Administration has appointed a highly-qualified and committed professional, in Igor, to this new and important position,” said Stewart Baker, Assistant Secretary for Policy. “This country has a deep-rooted tradition of providing refuge to those fleeing from persecution. We’re a better country for it, as Igor’s accomplishments show. I look forward to Igor’s contributions to that legacy.”

Timofeyev, a native of Russia and himself a refugee, brings considerable expertise to the department. He joins the department from the firm of Sidley Austin in Washington, D.C., and previously served as associate legal officer for the president of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, clerk for the U.S. Supreme Court and clerk for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Timofeyev holds a juris doctorate from Yale and a master’s of philosophy in Russian and Eastern European Studies from Oxford, and he graduated summa cum laude from Williams College. At Yale, Timofeyev was articles editor of the Yale Law Journal, co-director of the Forum on the Practice of International Law and president of the Russian and East European Law Forum.

As senior advisor for refugee and asylum policy, Timofeyev will help to guide the department’s policies that protect legitimate asylum and refugee seekers and uphold our nation’s deep commitment to human rights.

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Query — who is going to teach this Yalie the law?  🙂

KJ

P.S. For what it’s worth, Trevor Morrison reports that Timofeyev clerked for Judge Alex Kozinsk of the Ninth Circuiti, then Justice Kennedy (during the 2002 Term, the year of Demore v. Kim), and then (Trevor thinks) for the War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague.P.S.S.FROM Alberto BeneitizIgor Timofeyev was born in Moscow, Russia in 1974 and came to the United States at the age of 16. While in Moscow, he has been involved in the early pro-democracy movements. Igor graduated summa cum laude from Williams College in 1996, with a major in history. He subsequently spent two years at Oxford University in England, receiving the MPhil degree in Russian and East European Studies in 1998. A reworked part of his master’s thesis will appear as a chapter in an edited volume on the demise of Marxism-Leninism in the USSR. Igor graduated from Yale Law School in 2001, where he was an articles editor of the Yale Law Journal and a co-director of the Forum on the Practice of International Law. He has clerked for Judge Alex Kozinski of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, for Justice Anthony Kennedy of the US Supreme Court, and for Judge Theodore Meron, the president of the International Yugoslavia War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague. He is now an associate at Sidley Austin Brown & Wood in Washington, DC. http://www.pdsoros.org/fellows.cfm?year=1999#Igor