our board

BOARD CHAIR

Raha is a Managing Attorney with the Office of the Alameda County Public Defender in Oakland, California, and directs California's first public defender Immigration Representation Unit. The Unit received the 2016 "Program of the Year" award from the California Public Defender's Association. From 2007 until 2014, Raha served as a Clinical Professor at the UC Davis School of Law in the immigration law clinic. In 2015, she taught the first course offered at the UC Berkeley School of Law dedicated to "Crimmigration." Since 2005, Raha has provided pro bono representation and legal assistance to hundreds of immigrants, most of them detained, before the Immigration Court, BIA, U.S. District Court, U.S. Court of Appeals, and California state courts. She litigated the Israel O. case before the California Court of Appeal, resulting in California's first published opinion to uphold one-parent claims to SIJS for kids in delinquency proceedings. Raha regularly conducts training for attorneys and state court judges on the immigration consequences of criminal convictions, complex removal defense, and post-conviction relief for immigrants. In 2016, she was selected as one of eight fellows for the Rosenberg Foundation's Inaugural Leading Edge Fellowship and in 2017, she received the Community Service Award from the Iranian American Bar Association's Northern California Chapter. In 2018, her contributions to immigrant justice were recognized by the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild.

BOARD TREASURER

Margot is the Executive Director of the Prison Law Office. She works on a wide range of issues related to conditions of confinement, access to health care, disability rights, use of force, and staff misconduct in California prisons, jails, and immigration detention centers. Margot’s work involves trial, appellate, and post-judgment enforcement work, as well as policy advocacy. Before joining the PLO, Margot worked at Rosen Bien Galvan & Grunfeld, where she practiced complex civil litigation in state and federal courts at the trial and appellate level, focusing on civil rights matters. Margot was an Arthur Liman Public Interest Fellow, where she represented immigrants detained in Southern Arizona. She clerked for Judge Diana G. Motz of the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and Judge Catherine Blake of the US District Court for the District of Maryland. Margot received her JD from Yale Law School in 2009 and her BA from Harvard College.

BOARD SECRETARY

Sarah is the Associate Director of the Center for the Human Rights of Children and a Lecturer in the School of Law at Loyola University Chicago. Sarah has worked at the intersection of child migration and human rights for fifteen years, working with NGOs on complex human rights, migration, and international criminal law issues. Prior to joining Loyola, Sarah served as the National Case Director for the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights at the University of Chicago Law School, where she facilitated the expansion of the Young Center’s work in importing the framework for the best interests of the child under international law into the U.S. immigration system. Sarah spent seven years as a Clinical Instructor with the Asylum and Immigration Law Clinic at DePaul University College of Law. She created and taught two clinical programs there: the Immigration Policy Advocacy Clinic and the Advanced Immigrant Detainee Clinic. Throughout her career, Professor Diaz has participated in several initiatives designed to create access to human rights for children and migrants on a local, state, and international level, including co-authoring the Illinois Voices Act, serving on the Illinois Human Trafficking Task Force and helping to develop and co-lead a DACA legal services collaborative that directed policy feedback for the Obama Administration.