As a lawyer, Sam plans to represent people in criminal prosecution and removal proceedings and bring litigation in support of social movements organizing to end mass incarceration and decriminalize migration.

From 2013 through 2019, Sam worked for Voces de la Frontera, a Wisconsin-based immigrant rights organization, first as an organizer and then as communications director. At Voces, Sam worked on many campaigns, including successful efforts to defeat anti sanctuary-city legislation, to create a municipal ID available to undocumented Milwaukee residents, and to support the election of a Milwaukee County Sheriff committed to ending collaboration with ICE. Sam helped organize Voces’ voter mobilization efforts, civil disobedience actions, and mass marches which were joined by thousands of immigrant workers and supporters.

Sam grew up in Montgomery, Alabama. In high school and college, he volunteered and worked for the ACLU and the Central Alabama Fair Housing Center. As an undergraduate, he participated in campus organizing against sweatshops, took part in the Occupy Wall Street movement, and studied abroad in Venezuela. Sam graduated magna cum laude from Eastern Michigan University in 2013 with a degree in history and a minor in Spanish. After graduating, he worked as a summer intern at the Georgia Legal Services Program in the Farmworker Rights Division, where he supported wage theft litigation and performed Know Your Rights outreach to farm workers in southern Georgia. From 2015 to 2016, Sam was a live-in worker at Milwaukee’s Casa Maria Catholic Worker House of Hospitality, a community-run shelter for families in need of emergency housing.

In his free time, Sam is interested in bicycling, music, and social movement history. He speaks Spanish fluently.