Nicole Derden is a partner attorney at Derden Law located in Meridian, Idaho. She opened the practice in January 2009 focusing specifically on Idaho’s immigrants. Nicole was born in Oregon City, Oregon, grew up in a rural agricultural community, and graduated from Molalla High School in Molalla, Oregon, in 1997. At a young age she found an interest the Spanish language and Mexican culture, and in 2001 she graduated from Carroll College in Helena, Montana, with majors in Spanish and History and a minor in [Catholic] Theology. In 2004 she graduated from the University of Idaho College of Law where she began her immigration work at the Immigration Legal Aid Clinic. She has lived and studied in Xalapa, Veracruz, and Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico. Since her admission to the Idaho State Bar in 2005, she has exclusively practiced immigration law in Idaho. Her primary focus and passion is assisting undocumented immigrants in obtaining their Lawful Permanent Resident Status – primarily through the US Consulate in Ciudad Juarez and the US Citizenship and Immigration Service Boise Field Office. Nicole is active in her profession – she assisted in the formation of the Idaho Chapter of the American Immigration Lawyer Association (AILA) and has served two terms on its executive committee. She is a founding board member of www.projectlaura.org – an entity which seeks to match immigration attorneys with insolvent immigrants on the Boise deportation docket. Since 2014 Nicole has been an adjunct faculty member of the Concordia University College of Law in Boise, Idaho, and enjoys teaching her students, her clients, and fellow attorneys about the nuances of the US immigration system. In her free time Nicole is active in her parish and her children’s school. She enjoys walking/running, yoga, historical dramas, travelling and spending time her husband and their four boys