People

Michele Garnett McKenzie

Michele Garnett McKenzie serves on the senior leadership team at The Advocates for Human Rights, where she heads up the organization's research, education, and advocacy team and leads communication strategy.

Michele joined The Advocates' staff in 1999 as an attorney representing asylum seekers and detained immigrants and later managed the organization's immigration legal services program. Today Michele works to document and report on human rights issues and is the author of publications on human trafficking and immigrant rights. Michele also leads the organization's domestic policy advocacy, successfully working to create transformative policy change. 

Michele has served on the national leadership team of the Immigration Advocates Network. the Minnesota Coalition Against Sexual Assault public policy committee, the Minnesota Human Trafficking Task Force, and as chair of Detention Watch Network. A member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, she is admitted to practice in the State of Minnesota. She also has worked as an adjunct clinical faculty member of Mitchell Hamline College of Law and the University of Minnesota Law School.

Prior to joining The Advocates, Michele was in private immigration practice and served as a judicial law clerk for the Executive Office for Immigration Review in Arizona and Nevada. She received her J.D. cum laude from the University of Minnesota Law School and her B.A. cum laude from Macalester College and is admitted to practice law in the State of Minnesota.

Publications

• Immigration Court Observation Project Issue Brief: Unaccompanied Children
  October 4, 2023
• Seeking Release from Immigration Custody
  October 24, 2022
• Immigration Detention and COVID-19: Illuminating Human Rights Concerns in Minnesota Jails
  March 1, 2021
• Bearing Witness in the Moment: Report from the Immigration Court Observation Project
  January 1, 2020
• Safe Harbor for All Strategic Planning Process Report
  October 1, 2018
• Asking the Right Questions: A Human Rights Approach to Ending Trafficking and Exploitation in the Workplace
  January 1, 2016
• Moving from Exclusion to Belonging: Immigrant Rights in Minnesota Today
  April 1, 2013
• Safe Harbor: Fulfilling Minnesota's Promise to Protect Sexually Exploited Youth
  February 1, 2013
• Human Rights in Ethiopia: Through the Eyes of the Oromo Diaspora
  December 1, 2009
• A House with Two Rooms: Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Liberia Diaspora Project
  January 1, 2009

News

• New Report Details Due Process Failures for Kids in Immigration Court
  October 4, 2023