Jackie Gonzalez

Advisory Board Member

Jackie Gonzalez is the Policy Director for Immigrant Defense Advocates. Prior to co-founding IDA, she served as policy director for the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice (CCIJ). During her tenure, she designed and successfully advocated for the establishment of the California Immigrant Justice Fellowship, the first state sponsored program to expand access to counsel in the most underserved regions of the state and defend California’s residents against family separation. She also played a pivotal role in recent legislation aimed at countering ICE’s aggressive enforcement and detention apparatus, most notably AB32 which bans for profit detention centers from operating in California.

She began her career as a direct legal services attorney representing detained immigrant youth at Legal Services for Children, and working as a Deportation Defense Fellow at Van Der Hout, Brigagliano & Nightingale LLP. Jackie played an instrumental role in building two of the leading removal defense teams at non-profit agencies in the state of California. At Dolores Street Community Services, she coordinated and facilitated legal service provision and outreach efforts as the lead attorney for the San Francisco Immigrant Legal and Education Network (SFILEN), a network of thirteen organizations serving low-income immigrants. As the Immigration Policy Director at Centro Legal de la Raza, she helped grow Centro into one of the largest providers of removal defense services in the state. In the wake of the Trump presidency, she helped spearhead the formation of the Alameda County Immigration Legal and Education Partnership (ACILEP), a network that provides legal and support services to Alameda County families targeted by ICE enforcement.

Jackie’s commitment to immigrant rights includes advocacy and leadership that pushes past legal representation, and challenges systematic attempts to criminalize immigrant communities. As a result, Jackie has helped support local advocacy efforts to promote institutional change, including San Francisco’s Due Process Ordinance and Oakland’s sanctuary legislation— local measures that today still serve as the bedrock for much of the state’s pro immigrant legislation.

Jackie received her undergraduate degree from Harvard University and her law degree from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. As the daughter of immigrants, Jackie believes that solutions should come from those directly impacted by an issue and that sound policymaking must be informed by such connections and experience.