Bruce D. Nestor

Bruce D. Nestor   

Bruce D. Nestor represents individuals in areas of immigration, criminal defense, and post-conviction relief to eliminate the immigration consequences of criminal convictions.  Bruce represents people charged with crimes in state and federal court and representing immigrants before the Immigration Court and Board of Immigration Appeals. Bruce also challenges decisions of the Immigration Court and USCIS in federal district court and the federal courts of appeal.   

Bruce is an experienced criminal defense attorney who has tried over fifty misdemeanor and felony criminal cases to a jury. Bruce has handled criminal, immigration, and civil appeals before several Federal Circuit Courts of Appeals, the Minnesota Supreme Court and the Iowa Supreme Court. Bruce is a member of the Criminal Justice Act panel for the United States District Court of Minnesota and is routinely appointed to represent defendants in complex criminal proceedings.  

Bruce specializes in the immigration consequences of criminal convictions, including representing people seeking to vacate or set aside past criminal convictions to obtain immigration benefits. Bruce has obtained post-conviction relief for aggravated assault, felony drug convictions, and other crimes, both under Padilla v. Kentucky for failure to advise of the immigration consequences of convictions, and for other constitutional defects. Bruce was counsel in Reyes Campos v. State (a victory before the Minnesota Court of Appeals case holding that Padilla is not a new rule of constitutional criminal procedure, later reversed by the Minnesota Supreme Court) and in State v. Reynua (Minnesota Court of Appeals decision barring state prosecution for statements on the federal I-9 form).  

Bruce graduated from the University of Iowa Law School in 1992, with the highest honors. Bruce has been in private practice since 1994, after working for Legal Services Corporation of Iowa. Bruce has appeared before the United States Supreme Court; the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, Fifth Circuit, and Eleventh Circuit; the United States District Court for Minnesota, Southern District of Iowa, Northern District of Iowa, Middle District of Illinois, and Northern District of Alabama; state courts in Minnesota, Iowa and North Dakota; and immigration courts nationwide, including the Board of Immigration Appeals.     

Bruce is the past President of the National Lawyers Guild (2000-2003), a national bar association of progressive attorneys, law students, and legal workers, founded in 1937 as the first racially integrated bar association in the United States. He is a past president of the Minnesota Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, a member of the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild, and a member of the Minnesota Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.   

Bruce is also a political activist whose community work focuses on immigrant rights, criminal justice reform, and racial justice. Bruce has worked with the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Centro Campesino, the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee, $15 Now (Minimum Wage), the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign, Black Lives Matter and the Committee to Stop FBI Repression. Bruce has also traveled to Nicaragua, Cuba, Palestine, Arizona, Haiti, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Japan, South Korea, and Egypt as a member of human rights delegations.