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On Sept. 14, 2023, a federal appeals court handed down a published decision that quietly reshaped how immigration judges across nine states must handle torture claims. The case was Eric Hermosillo v. United States Attorney General Merrick Garland. The attorney who won it was Zulu Ali, a former Marine and former police officer, who runs a criminal defense and immigration firm out of Riverside, California.
The ruling was not front-page news. But its implications reach every immigration court within the 9th Circuit’s jurisdiction, which covers California, Arizona, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Montana, Idaho, Alaska, Hawaii and two U.S. territories. Roughly 60 million people live within that footprint.
What the case actually did
The 9th Circuit’s 2-1 decision in Hermosillo v. Garland (No. 18-71220) established the legal standard for presenting claims under the United Nations Convention Against Torture in U.S. federal immigration proceedings. The court ruled that petitioners must be given a full evidentiary hearing before a judge before those claims can be dismissed, remanding the case with specific instructions to that effect.
Ali had argued that position for years. Courts and opposing counsel repeatedly pushed back. He kept going.
“The law was clear to me from the beginning,” Ali said. “The Convention Against Torture exists precisely for cases like this. The resistance wasn’t legal. It was institutional.”
The distinction matters. Institutional resistance in immigration courts often means cases get dismissed at procedural stages before the merits are ever heard. The Hermosillo ruling requires judges to engage with the substance of torture claims rather than dismiss them on procedural grounds. For immigrants facing removal to countries where they face credible threats of torture, that hearing can be the difference between safety and deportation into danger.
Five circuits, the Supreme Court, and The Hague
Ali’s federal court reach extends well beyond the 9th Circuit. He holds admission to the U.S. District Courts for the Central, Southern and Northern Districts of California and Colorado, federal circuit courts and the Supreme Court. He also holds admission to the International Criminal Court at The Hague and the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights in Tanzania.
That breadth is unusual for a firm of his size. Most attorneys with Inland Empire practices do not hold Supreme Court admission or argue before multiple circuit courts. Ali deliberately built that federal reach, treating each admission as a tool for the specific clients his firm serves: immigrants facing removal, defendants with appellate claims and individuals whose cases raise constitutional questions that exceed state courts’ reach.
“Immigration consequences don’t stop at the California border,” Ali said. “When a client faces deportation, their case can touch federal courts across multiple circuits. You have to be ready to go wherever the case demands.”
His postgraduate studies in international and treaty law provided the academic foundation for appearing before international tribunals. That training directly informed his argument in Hermosillo, which required applying the Convention Against Torture within a U.S. federal proceeding.
The clients behind the cases
The Hermosillo case did not exist in isolation. It emerged from a practice that handles dozens of cases annually where criminal charges and immigration consequences collide. A conviction, even for a minor offense, can trigger removal proceedings for a non-citizen. A plea deal that seems reasonable in criminal court can carry immigration consequences that no one explained to the defendant.
Ali has structured his firm specifically for that overlap. His background as a former police officer in Tennessee with the City of Shelbyville, City of Lewisburg and Vanderbilt Police Department, followed by years as a criminal investigator with the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, gives him an understanding of how prosecutions are built that many defense attorneys lack.
The firm, co-led with his daughter, attorney Whitney Ali, who joined in 2015 and became a management-level partner in 2021, handles cases across Riverside, Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego and San Bernardino counties.
“We take cases other firms turn down,” Ali said. “Not because we don’t understand the risk, but because someone has to. These clients don’t have the option of waiting for an easier attorney.”
What a published decision actually means
In federal appellate practice, not all decisions are created equal. Unpublished decisions carry no binding precedential value. Published decisions do. The Hermosillo ruling is published, meaning every immigration judge in the 9th Circuit is now bound by the standard Ali argued and won.
The 9th Circuit handles more immigration appeals than any other federal circuit in the country. The volume of cases affected by this precedent is substantial. Attorneys representing clients with torture claims in any of the nine states within the circuit can now cite Hermosillo when courts attempt to dismiss those claims without a full hearing.
Ali received his Criminal Defense Litigator of the Year recognition from the American Institute of Trial Lawyers in both 2023 and 2024, the same period in which the Hermosillo decision came down. The American Institute of Trial Lawyers extends that recognition to fewer than 0.03% of practicing attorneys.
None of that changes what the Hermosillo decision represents on its own terms: a years-long legal fight, waged by a single attorney from a Riverside firm, that ended with a federal ruling protecting torture claimants across one of the largest judicial jurisdictions in the world.
“I didn’t take that case to win an award,” Ali said. “I took it because my client’s life was at stake. That’s the only reason that matters.”
