Mikaila Hernández

Bertha Justice Fellow

Mikaila Hernández is a Bertha Justice Fellow at the Center for Constitutional Rights, where she works on defending the rights of asylum seekers and immigrants taking sanctuary, challenging discriminatory and unconstitutional policing practices, and supporting racial and gender justice issues. Prior to joining the Center for Constitutional Rights, Mikaila worked as a law counselor for the Workers’ Rights Clinic, the Domestic Violence Clinic, and the Name and Gender-Marker Clinic at the University of San Diego School of Law. Her research during law school focused on how prisons undermine the War on Poverty and should be abolished.  She also clerked for the Federal Defenders of San Diego and has worked as a law clerk on issues relating to employment law, re-entry and post-conviction, and justice for tenants living in uninhabitable spaces.

Mikaila was born and raised in the borderlands of El Paso, TX, and Cd. Juárez, MX, where she first experienced the power of community for survival. She was a first-generation college student at the University of Texas at Austin where she graduated with a B.S. in Radio-TV-Film in 2012. She earned her J.D. from the University of San Diego School of Law, where she was awarded the Community Defender Award for her work defending those living in poverty against the prosecutorial power of the federal government.