Anahi Mendoza Pacheco

Anahi Mendoza is a 1L at Columbia Law. Prior to attending law school, Anahi served as the founding Executive Director of the Immigrant Legal Defense Center (ILDC), an organization dedicated to providing equal access to justice and due process to immigrants in deportation proceedings. Under her leadership, the ILDC received the Chris Lanier Solidarity Award from the Democratic Party of Santa Barbara County and she was named Congressional Woman of the Year by Congressman Salud Carbajal (CA-24). Prior to joining the ILDC, Anahi served as Community Fellow with the Immigrant Justice Corps (IJC), a two-year fellowship envisioned by Honorable Robert Katzmann- Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals - and designed to provide legal services to low-income immigrants. As a Department of Justice Accredited Representative, Anahi provided pro bono legal representation to hundreds of asylum seekers at Human Rights First, immigrant families at Faith in New York, and Central American asylum seeking women and children detained at family detention centers along the U.S.-Mexico border. Anahi graduated from Harvard University in 2015 with a degree in Social Studies, a secondary in Ethnicity, Migration and Rights, and an award winning thesis on the criminalization of immigrants. She served as the Director of Act on a Dream, an organization dedicated to advocating for undocumented students on campus and throughout the nation, and served as the founding Co-Editor-in-Chief of Manifesta Magazine, Harvard's first feminist magazine. For her advocacy for immigrant communities, Anahi was honored at the White House in 2014 as a White House Champion of Change.