Leon Wildes served on the Yeshiva College Board of Overseers and was Treasurer of the Yeshiva College Board.
15 Facts About Leon Wildes
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In 1959, Leon Wildes served as a Migrations Specialist with the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, where he concentrated his efforts on issues in US immigration and refugee law.
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Leon Wildes served on the Board of Directors of HIAS as an Honorary Director.
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Leon Wildes was awarded the Edith Lowenstein Award for Outstanding Contributions in the Field of Immigration Practice and the Elmer Fried Prize for Excellence in Teaching Immigration Law.
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Leon Wildes founded an Immigration Law Externship Clinic through which students work on immigration cases for a variety of non-profit organizations under the supervision of immigration attorneys.
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Leon Wildes garnered much acclaim for his successful representation of former Beatle John Lennon and his artist wife, Yoko Ono, in their deportation proceedings instituted by the Nixon administration.
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Leon Wildes contributed five full law review articles on the subject of developments in US immigration law which resulted from his handling of the Lennon case.
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Leon Wildes has guided the development of this remedy in the law, later referred to as Deferred Action or Prosecutorial discretion.
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Leon Wildes served as national president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association in 1970.
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Leon Wildes' clientele includes many high-profile clients, notably John Lennon and Yoko Ono, whom he successfully represented in deportation proceedings from 1972 to 1976.
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Leon Wildes co-produced Mark St Germain's off-Broadway play "Ears on a Beatle" depicting the surveillance of John Lennon by the FBI at the time.
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Leon Wildes appeared alongside his clients in many press conferences and was interviewed with Lennon by Tom Snyder on The Tomorrow Show, and he appears in the documentary The US vs John Lennon, which focuses on this period of Lennon's life.
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Leon Wildes published numerous articles in the immigration field from 1959 and lectured broadly to lawyers for the Practising Law Institute, the New York State Bar Association, and the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
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Leon Wildes contributed law review articles to the San Diego Law Review, Cardozo School of Law Law Review, and the Brooklyn Law Review on subjects relating to US Immigration Law.
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Leon Wildes died on January 8,2024, at the age of 90 after suffering a series of strokes.