The Immigrant Defense Advocates Advisory Committee provides guidance and input on IDA’s goals and vision.
Eunice Cho
Senior Staff Attorney
ACLU National Prison Project
Eunice Hyunhye Cho is a Senior Staff Attorney at the ACLU National Prison Project. Eunice’s work focuses on challenging unconstitutional conditions in U.S. immigration detention facilities and the expansion of immigration detention. Prior to joining the NPP, Eunice was a Staff Attorney at the ACLU of Washington, where she litigated cases involving the rights of immigrants in detention, incarcerated people, and students with disabilities. She also worked as a Staff Attorney at the Southern Poverty Law Center, where she litigated cases related to immigration enforcement abuse and prison conditions, and authored several reports regarding abuses in immigration detention and immigration court adjudication, including Shadow Prisons: Immigration Detention in the South. She was a Skadden Fellow, and later a Staff Attorney, at the National Employment Law Center, focusing on issues affecting immigrant workers.
Eunice received a B.A. from Yale University and a J.D. from Stanford Law School. Following graduation, she clerked for Hon. Kim McLane Wardlaw of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. She is proficient in Spanish and Korean, and is a former community organizer.
Norma Chavez-Peterson
Executive Director- ACLU of San Diego
Norma Chávez-Peterson is an integral member of San Diego’s civil rights community, with nearly two decades of visionary leadership, organizing and advocacy experience in California’s second-most populous county and southern borderlands. She joined the ACLU of San Diego & Imperial Counties (“ACLU SDIC”) as organizing director in 2012, and became the affiliate’s executive director in 2013. She was instrumental in creating the ACLU SDIC’s integrated advocacy campaign to advance priority issues such as criminal justice reform, police accountability and immigrant rights. Under her leadership, ACLU SDIC staff size has more than doubled to forty dedicated professionals who work with, and within diverse communities to build power together. Further, the affiliate expanded its presence in the Imperial Valley, establishing an Imperial County office in January 2018.
Prior to joining the ACLU, Chávez-Peterson was executive director of Justice Overcoming Boundaries, a collaborative network of faith, community, education, business and labor partners she co-founded to advance social justice. She currently serves on the boards of Partners For Progress and Engage San Diego; and most recently, helped to launch the San Diego Rapid Response Network.
In her annual Salute to Women Leaders, California Assemblymember Shirley N. Weber, Ph.D. named Chávez-Peterson the 79th District’s Woman of the Year for 2017, saying “Norma demonstrates the kind of strong, passionate, visionary and effective leadership we need so desperately right now to protect the rights of our most vulnerable residents.”
Norma Chávez-Peterson attended San Diego State University where she earned a BA in Political Science and Chicano/a Studies. She is married and lives with her family in Chula Vista.
Adriana Melgoza
Clinical Manager- Watsonville Law Center
Adriana is an immigrant from Mexico who grew up in Castroville, California, a rural community in the Central Coast predominately comprised of farm workers, low-income families, and immigrants. Adriana is proud to come from a family of farm workers who have always worked for human rights in different capacities.
She currently works for the Watsonville Law Center as Clinic Manager and former Central Coast Coordinator for the the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice (CCIJ). She has worked with other community leaders to provide thousands of hours of volunteer service in legal aid and community organizing on the Central Coast that wish to be directly involved in creating a social justice movement. She manages the center’s legal clinics and recruits, trains and supervises volunteers and pro-bono attorneys. She organizes and provides community education around legal issues and staff training for community organizations serving immigrants in the Central Coast. She also worked part-time with the American Civil Liberties Union as a Field Fellow developing leaders in her community by providing trainings and public education and connecting the broader networks in her community. She has worked in the past for Immigration Action Group as a community organizer educating, advocating and organizing for immigrant justice. She is part of different organizations in her community working for rights and justice for all. She serves as a dispatcher for the Monterey Rapid Response Network, a network responding to immigration enforcements in the Central Coast.
She is passionate about human rights and social justice because she believes in recognizing the dignity of every person. She wants to continue to advocate for underserved populations in a bigger capacity by continuing to work in the nonprofit world and to give back to the communities that have supported her growth. She is a committed community member and active representative of those in her local community. Adriana is a firm believer of alliance and solidarity for human rights, and knows that it is only through direct communication and involvement of impacted community members that social justice will be reached.
Jesus Martinez
Executive Director- Central Valley Immigrant Integration Collaborative
Jesus Martinez is Executive Director of the Central Valley Immigrant Integration Collaborative (CVIIC), a regional network of immigrant serving organizations created in Fresno in 2014. As a coordinator of regional efforts, CVIIC and partner organizations serve immigrants in the Central California region encompassed by Kern County in the south and San Joaquin County in the north.
Before heading CVIIC, he was Coordinator of the Central Valley DACA Project for the Immigrant Legal Resource Center (2012-2015) and, previously, worked as a consultant (2008-2013) in a variety of projects commissioned by nonprofit and federal government agencies.
Martinez served in the Michoacan (Mexico) State Congress from 2005-2007 before being appointed Director General at the Institute for Michoacanos Abroad, the state immigration affairs agency. In the academic world he taught Political Science at Santa Clara University (1991-1998), completed a postdoctoral stay at the Instituto de Investigaciones Dr. Jose Maria Luis Mora in Mexico City (1999-2000) and taught Latin American and Chicano Studies at CSU Fresno (2000-2004). He obtained a B.S. in Political Science at Santa Clara University, an M.A. in Latin American Studies and a Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies from the University of California, Berkeley. His areas of expertise include international migration, U.S.-Mexican relations and public policy.
Special Projects Advisor
Dr. Caitlin Patler Ph.D.
Caitlin Patler, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Davis. She is an Executive Committee Member of the UC Davis Global Migration Center and a Faculty Affiliate at the Center for Poverty Research and the Human Rights Program. She is an expert on immigrant legal status and immigration detention, in particular understanding conditions of confinement.
She has published widely on these topics, including statistical analyses of family visitation and solitary confinement in detention facilities; the history and legal context of immigration detention, and its fiscal and human impacts; and a New York Times Op-Ed on the harms of detention for immigrant children. Her ongoing research also explores the intergenerational impacts of detention by analyzing the experiences of U.S. citizen children with detained parents.
Dr. Patler has received multiple grants for her research, including support from the National Science Foundation, Russell Sage Foundation, and the National Academies/Spencer Foundation, among others. She received the 2018 American Sociological Association Latina/o Sociology Distinguished Contribution to Research Award and the 2019 Pacific Sociological Association Distinguished Contribution to Sociological Perspectives Award. For more information on Professor Patler, please visit her website.