Marcela Navarrete

About Marcela Navarrete

Marcela joined the firm as a trainee solicitor in 2008 and qualified as a solicitor in 2010. She became a partner in 2018 and currently supervises a team of solicitors, trainees and caseworkers.

She practices a wide range of immigration law, including asylum and human rights cases, EUSS applications and family migration applications under Appendix FM and outside of the rules, advising legally aided and private clients. She has extensive experience of preparing appeals at all levels as well as complex Judicial Review applications. She has had conduct of a number of cases in the High Court, Court of Appeal. She also has experience of advising and representing clients refused naturalisation due to national security considerations (SIAC cases).

She is currently acting for two lead claimants in challenge to the recent Home Office guidance which means that people who entered the UK illegally will normally be refused British Citizenship.

In recent years Marcela has also focused on representing clients from Afghanistan, both within the UK and those remaining in Afghanistan. She has brought challenges for people refused relocation under the ARAP (Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy) scheme and other schemes introduced by the UK Government as a response to the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. Previous strategic challenges include the challenge to the Detained Fast Track system and later represented one of the test claimants in a challenge to the Detained Asylum Casework process which was brought in following the suspension of the Detained Fast Track process.

Marcela is an accredited supervisor and accredited to Advanced level (level 3) under the Law Society Immigration Law Accreditation scheme. She was also a finalist at the Legal Aid Lawyer of the Year awards in 2017 in the Immigration and Asylum category. She is ranked both in the Legal 500 and Chambers and Partners.

Interests: Reading, politics and music.

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