Karena Gutierrez

Karena L. Gutierrez, Esq. is a Staff Attorney at the Southwest Detroit Immigrant and Refugee Center, where she focuses on immigration removal defense and has a special dedication to representing unaccompanied minors in removal proceedings. She also has broad experience in family-based immigration, helping clients with relative petitions, waivers, adjustment of status, and naturalization.

Karena’s passion for this work is personal—she grew up the daughter of asylum recipients and has made it her mission to support families escaping persecution. That experience fuels her commitment to serving the immigrant community with compassion, skill, and fairness. She makes it a priority to provide quality legal services at rates accessible to individuals with limited financial means, because she believes justice should never depend on income.

Licensed to practice in the State of Washington, Karena earned her Juris Doctor from Seattle University School of Law in 2016 and has dedicated her career to immigration law ever since. When she’s not in the courtroom or working with clients, Karena loves traveling, experimenting in the kitchen, and spending time with her husband, Erik, their two daughters, Elena and Evelyn, and the family’s goldendoodle, Atticus.