Hayden is an Immigrant Justice Staff Attorney with the LCCRSF Asylum Program. He represents individuals and families in their asylum cases before the San Francisco Immigration Court and Asylum Office. He also represents local youth in their state and federal petitions for Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS), and survivors of violence seeking U visas. Hayden mentors and co-counsels with private law firm pro bono attorneys representing low- or no-income clients seeking humanitarian protections from deportation. 

From 2019 to 2022, Hayden was a Justice Catalyst Fellow with LCCRSF’s Immigration Justice team. In coalition with the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project (ASAP), Hayden created and led a Federal Tort Claims Act Separated Family initiative to empower and secure counsel for hundreds of asylum-seeker families forcibly separated and harmed under the Trump administration’s Zero Tolerance policies. He litigated the first separated-family FTCA case at the Northern District of California. Hayden was class counsel in the Zepeda RivasCOVID-19 habeas action, and counsel in a group habeas seeking improved detention conditions and release for individuals in immigration detention in northern and central California. He also served as class counsel in Doe v. Wolf, seeking improved detention conditions in U.S. Border Patrol custody in Arizona. Hayden is admitted to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Hayden graduated from Yale Law School in 2019. His research and advocacy in law school centered on queer immigrant and HIV-positive communities in the San Francisco Bay Area. He graduated from Stanford University with his Master’s degree in Latin American Studies, and his Bachelor’s degrees in Classics and International Relations. Hayden is a queer Chicano from the Coachella Valley, California.