Attorney Who Sued More than Trump Policies Will get US Court docket Seat (1)

Mónica Ramírez Almadani, an immigrant rights attorney who led and backed instances in opposition to Trump-period immigration insurance policies, was verified to a seat on the Los Angeles-primarily based federal trial courtroom.

The Senate voted 51-44 on Thursday to validate Ramírez Almadani, president and CEO of Community Counsel, a countrywide pro bono firm that provides cost-free and lower-price authorized companies for public desire litigation.

The former federal prosecutor and Kamala Harris adviser throughout her times as California lawyer standard is headed to the US District Court for the Central District of California.

Ramírez Almadani, 43, has moved among government and general public fascination work in the nearly two a long time given that she graduated from Stanford Legislation and clerked for late Ninth Circuit Choose Warren J. Ferguson.

She’s worked on behalf of immigration and immigrant rights difficulties through her job, no matter whether hard place of work raids by the Bush administration for the ACLU or managing the University of California, Irvine Law School’s immigration regulation clinic.

She’s represented “families separated and harmed due to the fact of our broken immigration method, victims of human trafficking and boy or girl exploitation” and “low wage staff taken benefit of,” Almadani mentioned throughout for the duration of a Berkeley Law graduation keynote in 2022.

Immigrant Rights

Out of legislation school, Ramírez Almadani labored at the ACLU’s Immigrant Rights Challenge, the place she was involved in demanding an Arizona legislation denying bail to immigrants in the US illegally. The Ninth Circuit reversed a district court’s selection, and observed the bail legislation in Lopez-Valenzuela v. County of Maricopa unconstitutional.

Ramírez Almadani has also challenged the Trump administration’s immigration insurance policies on a lot of occasions.

In Regents of the Univ. of Cal. v. U.S. Dep’t of Homeland Sec., she represented University of California directors doing the job to shield learners who risked currently being deported soon after the Trump administration slashed the Obama-period Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) software. She aided protected an injunction from the termination selection, and the Supreme Court docket later upheld the injunction in June 2020.

Ramírez Almadani briefly taught at the College of California, Irvine College of Regulation and co-directed their Immigrant Rights Clinic, the place she represented indigent clients facing deportation, work, and civil legal rights concerns.

Harris Adviser

Ramírez Almadani joined the Justice Office throughout the Obama administration, doing the job in senior roles under future Labor Secretary Tom Perez when he headed the Civil Legal rights Division, and former Deputy Attorney Common James Cole on civil legal rights and immigration issues.

Afterward, she returned to Los Angeles for a quick stint as a federal prosecutor on basic criminal and later public corruption and civil legal rights situations. The encounter showed her that “we require more various voices within just federal government, and in particular in prosecutorial places of work that have so a lot electricity,” she instructed the Los Angeles Moments in 2021.

As an appointed specific assistant legal professional normal in California, she suggested Harris on immigrant rights, felony justice, and civil rights issues.

Previous Attorney Normal Eric Holder and other colleagues from her time at the Justice Office explained in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee in assist of her nomination that Almadani “distinguished herself as an uncommonly strong courtroom advocate, as a thoughtful and arduous lawyer, and as a heat and gracious colleague.”

Early Daily life

Ramírez Almadani is a child of Mexican immigrants and attended community universities in southeast Los Angeles. Her large university principal told her freshman course that half of them would not graduate.

“We have been accustomed by that younger age, sadly, to know that our prospective customers were being bleak,” she instructed graduating students through past year’s Berkeley Law commencement keynote. “That graduating large university, significantly considerably less likely to higher education, was not for everyone, and particularly not for youngsters like us, from an inner metropolis, doing the job course, and immigrant track record.”