Bretz & Coven: The Ex-INS Trial Attorney Whose Name Is in the Supreme Court’s Immigration Doctrine

Attorney Advertising. The information on this profile does not constitute legal advice and no attorney-client relationship is formed by reading it. Past results described do not guarantee similar outcomes.

When the Supreme Court decided INS v. St. Cyr in 2001 — preserving habeas corpus review and relief eligibility for immigrants with old convictions against retroactive new laws — Kerry Bretz was on the brief and at counsel’s table. A former trial attorney for the legacy INS who crossed to the immigrants’ side, Bretz built with partner Jules Coven a forty-five-person, twenty-language firm at 305 Broadway that concentrates on the field’s hardest terrain: deportation defense, the immigration consequences of criminal conduct, and federal litigation aggressive enough to have changed national doctrine — the practice other immigration and criminal lawyers refer their impossible cases to.

At a Glance

Firm	Bretz & Coven, LLP (formed 1999 by the merger of Kerry Bretz’s and Jules E. Coven’s practices)
Senior Partner	Kerry W. Bretz; partners including Eileen Bretz
Offices	305 Broadway, Suite 100, New York, NY 10007 (main); Clark, New Jersey; and a Bronx office
Focus	Deportation and removal defense; “crimmigration” — the immigration consequences of criminal and fraudulent conduct; adjustment of status, green cards, naturalization, asylum, waivers, consular processing; employment- and investor-based immigration; and federal court challenges through the Courts of Appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court
Scale	Approximately 45 employees speaking more than 20 languages; many staff members have themselves been through the federal immigration process
Lead Credentials	Bretz: former Trial Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice, Immigration and Naturalization Service; B.A. magna cum laude, Lehman College (CUNY); admitted in New York, Connecticut, and Florida, the Second, Third, and Fifth Circuits, and the U.S. Supreme Court; AV Preeminent rated; contributing editor, AILA’s Litigation Toolbox
Firm Rating	Martindale-Hubbell AV Preeminent (firm-level); listings in Super Lawyers and Best Lawyers
Fee Structure	By consultation

Career History

Bretz’s formation was on the government’s side: trial attorney for the legacy INS at the Department of Justice, prosecuting the removal cases he would later spend his career defending. In private practice he became a principal architect of the litigation resistance to the 1996 immigration laws’ harshest features — the retroactive application of new deportability rules and mandatory detention. He was attorney of record in Henderson v. INS, 157 F.3d 106 (2d Cir. 1998), and served on the brief and at counsel’s table before the U.S. Supreme Court in INS v. St. Cyr, 533 U.S. 289 (2001), and its companion Calcano-Martinez v. INS — decisions that preserved judicial review and relief eligibility for immigrants with criminal convictions nationwide. In St. John v. McElroy he won the release of a mentally disabled woman from INS custody, with a federal judge awarding roughly $88,000 in fees under the Equal Access to Justice Act. The firm’s federal litigation practice has produced many published decisions, and its attorneys have had a statute declared unconstitutional. The 1999 merger with Jules Coven’s practice built the platform: a full-service firm whose bench now spans partners and associates including internationally trained lawyers, with Bretz’s AILA publications — the Litigation Toolbox, habeas materials, EAJA fee-motion templates — equipping the wider bar. He serves as a Commissioner on the Archdiocese of New York’s Commission for the Dignity of Immigrants.

Practice Concentration

The signature concentration is crimmigration: more than twenty-five years counseling noncitizen criminal defendants — and their criminal-defense lawyers — on how convictions, alleged conduct, and fraudulent-document histories cascade into detention, deportation, and inadmissibility, and how plea-stage strategy can avert them. Around it runs full-spectrum capability: removal defense at every procedural altitude, asylum, waivers, family- and employment-based residence, naturalization, consular processing, and investor and business immigration. The distinguishing layer is litigation: when administrative channels fail, the firm’s practice runs through habeas petitions, petitions for review, and constitutional challenges in the federal courts — the apparatus its principal helped build doctrinally. The firm’s stated identity is taking the cases other lawyers turn down, and its referral flow from other immigration and criminal attorneys corroborates the positioning.

Track Record

The marquee results are matters of published federal record with citations: Henderson, St. Cyr, Calcano-Martinez, and St. John — cases that changed the national availability of relief for immigrants with convictions, preserved habeas review, and demonstrated fee-shifting accountability against the government. Few practices in any field can point to Supreme Court doctrine they helped make. The firm’s broader case results are its own characterizations, attributed as such; this research did not independently verify individual client outcomes beyond the published decisions. Past results do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome in any future case.

Client Voice

The client record reflects the practice’s rescue positioning: one long-term client with a very complicated situation describes years of representation after many NYC lawyers and substantial spending elsewhere had failed; others describe a team that thoroughly understands each case and anticipates challenges through matters that run months or years. The firm’s staffing choice — employees who have personally been through the immigration process, speaking the languages of the communities served — is itself a client-experience structure. The public review base is moderate in size for a firm of this scale, which we note plainly. This research did not surface any public disciplinary findings.

Beyond the Courtroom

Bretz’s Archdiocesan commission service, his contributing-editor role equipping the national immigration bar’s litigators through AILA’s practice materials, and the firm’s expansion into the Bronx — bringing serious removal-defense capability to the borough with the city’s fewest such practices — constitute a professional citizenship record consistent with the practice’s stated commitment to comprehensive immigration reform.

Recognition

Sorting per our standard: the AV Preeminent ratings (attorney and firm level) are Martindale-Hubbell’s highest peer-review tier; the Super Lawyers and Best Lawyers listings are peer-informed recognitions from commercial publications; the AILA editorial roles are peer-institutional credentials; and the weightiest recognition is jurisprudential — named participation in Supreme Court and Second Circuit decisions that govern the field. A disclosure we apply to every New York profile: New York State does not operate a board certification program for legal specialties comparable to the Texas Board of Legal Specialization, so no New York attorney profile on this site will describe its subject as a state-certified specialist, and this profile attributes no certification to the firm’s attorneys.

New York Legal Backdrop

Immigration law is federal, and this firm’s history is woven into its modern shape. The 1996 laws (AEDPA and IIRIRA) expanded deportability, restricted relief, and imposed mandatory detention — and the litigation counterattack in which this firm’s principal was a named participant preserved two pillars that govern practice today: St. Cyr held that relief eligibility could not be stripped retroactively from immigrants who pleaded guilty when relief was available, and with Calcano-Martinez preserved habeas corpus review when direct judicial review was foreclosed. Crimmigration practice operates in that framework: since Padilla v. Kentucky, criminal defense counsel must advise on immigration consequences, and the classification of offenses — aggravated felonies, crimes involving moral turpitude — determines detention, deportability, and relief eligibility with unforgiving precision, making plea-stage immigration counsel decisive. Removal proceedings remain civil, with no appointed counsel; the federal courts remain the error-correction layer; and the Equal Access to Justice Act allows fee recovery when the government’s position is not substantially justified — a mechanism this firm has used to judgment. None of this is legal advice; consult a licensed immigration attorney about your situation.

Awesome Attorneys Assessment

The case for Bretz & Coven is doctrine-making litigation capability at institutional scale: a principal whose name is in the field’s governing Supreme Court cases, a former government insider’s command of the removal apparatus, a forty-five-person multilingual bench with tri-state offices, genuine crimmigration depth that the criminal-defense bar itself relies on, and a demonstrated willingness to take — and win — the cases everyone else declines.

The honest trade-offs, stated plainly: the marquee jurisprudential results date to the late 1990s and early 2000s, and prospective clients should ask which of the firm’s current attorneys would lead their matter; the public review base is moderate for the firm’s size; complex federal litigation of the kind this firm is built for is inherently long and costly, a fit consideration for routine matters better served elsewhere in this directory; and the firm’s outcome characterizations beyond the published decisions are its own.

Methodology & Sourcing

This profile was researched and written independently by Awesome Attorneys in August 2026 without the participation, sponsorship, or payment of Bretz & Coven, LLP. Primary sources: the firm’s website (bretzlaw.com), including its home, attorney-biography, and team pages (the INS trial-attorney background; the Henderson, St. Cyr, and Calcano-Martinez citations and roles; the crimmigration concentration and 25-plus-year counseling record; the unconstitutionality result; the associate roster including internationally trained attorneys). Independent verification: Yelp listing (the 1999 merger; the 45-employee, 20-plus-language scale; the AV Preeminent firm rating; the 305 Broadway address; the staff-experience note); Lawyers.com and Cornell LII profiles (the St. John v. McElroy EAJA result; the Lehman College magna cum laude degree; multi-jurisdiction and Supreme Court admissions; the AILA publications; the Archdiocesan commission role; NYSACDL membership); Attorney-at-Law directory (the Super Lawyers and Best Lawyers listings; the referral-destination positioning; the long-term client account); PR4Lawyers releases (the Clark, New Jersey and Bronx offices; tri-state service area). The cited decisions are published federal court records. The federal-law framework in the Legal Backdrop reflects the Immigration and Nationality Act, AEDPA, IIRIRA, and the cited case law.

Publisher Disclosure & Independence Notice

Awesome Attorneys is an independent legal-directory publisher. This profile was not paid for by Bretz & Coven, LLP, and inclusion in our editorial coverage cannot be purchased. Our methodology and editorial standards are applied consistently across all firms we cover.