Bennett Reiss, LMSW

Bennett Reiss is the founder and primary evaluator of Kipu Terra LLC, a New Mexico based psychosocial evaluation practice focused on immigration hardship waiver cases. A first-generation Peruvian-American born and raised in the New York City area, Bennett brings lived and professional familiarity with the immigration experience from multiple angles. He is a Licensed Master Social Worker in New Mexico and holds a Master of Social Work from Indiana University. His clinical work sits at the intersection of forensic social work, trauma-informed assessment, and cross-cultural evaluation.

Before entering clinical practice, Bennett spent more than twenty years as a China-Latin America affairs analyst and commentator, producing long-form written analysis on the political, economic, and cultural currents shaping migration across the Americas. That analytic career, conducted in English, Spanish (fluent, native-equivalent), and Mandarin Chinese (intermediate), grounds the cross-cultural context he brings to every evaluation. He has lived and worked in China and Peru, and has done business throughout South America. The qualifying relatives in immigration hardship cases are overwhelmingly from Latin America, and the country conditions that shape their family dynamics, their reasons for remaining in the United States, and the weight of potential separation are conditions Bennett has studied professionally for two decades and knows personally through his own family.

Growing up around New York City exposed Bennett to immigration from every part of the world and every walk of life, and a lifetime of being present as friends and family members navigated immigration processes in the United States, Mexico, El Salvador, Venezuela, Peru, Argentina, Uruguay, France, and Spain deepened that exposure into lived familiarity with how these systems affect the people inside them. Relocating to New Mexico was a deliberate choice: the state's unique cultural heritage (the blending of Hispanic, Indigenous, and more recent Mexican and Central American communities) and its proximity to the U.S.-Mexico border offer an uncommonly close perspective on the population Kipu Terra serves. Running an immigration evaluation practice from New Mexico is not a limitation; it is a vantage point.

Bennett is also a serial entrepreneur with a track record of building publication-quality work. He founded Santa Fe Selection, a printed travel guide and map for Santa Fe, New Mexico, and developed the broader Kipu brand from which Kipu Terra takes its name. The Kipu (or quipu) is the Andean knotted-cord recording system used to store and convey information, a fitting metaphor given Bennett's Peruvian heritage and the forensic work of preserving and transmitting a qualifying relative's experience so a federal adjudicator can see it.

His forensic reports reflect that discipline. They run ten to twenty-five pages, document DSM-5 diagnostic impressions from structured clinical interviews and standardized instruments (PHQ-9, GAD-7, PCL-5, and additional measures as clinically indicated), and connect the clinical data to USCIS extreme hardship factors across multiple domains. Every report is reviewed and co-signed by Steven Morrison, LCSW, Kipu Terra's Clinical Lead, before release.

Bennett practices within the ethical frame of the NASW Code of Ethics, with particular attention to the impartiality and objectivity required of forensic work. The values he brings to the practice are authenticity, continuous learning, and open dialogue across difference.

He operates the firm as a form of professional resistance: clinical, documented, and structural resistance through the legitimate tools of the social work profession. Under the current enforcement climate, the psychosocial evaluation is frequently the single most important piece of clinical evidence in a hardship waiver case, and the population served, financially vulnerable and facing potential family separation, cannot absorb predatory pricing. Kipu Terra's standard evaluation fee of $750 reflects that reality, deliberately.

Bennett is based in New Mexico and serves immigration attorneys and families nationwide via secure HIPAA-compliant telehealth. Kipu Terra can be reached at 505-428-9176 or contact@kiputerra.com.