Join the NIU College of Law for the next Race and the Law Conversation, “Immigration and Racial Disparities” on Wednesday, February 23 at 6:00 p.m. with The Honorable Bianca Camargo (’10) and Ohio State Law Professor César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández. NIU Law Interim Assistant Dean Anita Maddali will moderate.
Wednesday, February 23, 2022
6:00 – 7:30 p.m. CST
Register Now for this virtual Event via Zoom
About this Event
The NIU College of Law Race and the Law Conversations series provide a platform with expert panelists who will engage in much needed conversations on a wide range of racial and social justice issues including, but limited to, racial inequality, police brutality, mass incarceration, voting rights, environmental justice, and immigration.
-PANELISTS-
The Honorable Bianca Camargo
Sixteenth Judicial Circuit of Kane County, Illinois
On August 9, 2021, Judge Bianca Camargo was appointed by the State of Illinois Supreme Court to fill a Circuit Judge vacancy in the Sixteenth Judicial Circuit of Kane County. This appointment made Judge Camargo the first Latina Circuit Judge in the history of Kane County and one of five women who has been directly appointed by the Illinois Supreme Court to serve as a Circuit Judge.
Judge Camargo has dedicated her career to serving her community for over 15 years. Her career in the legal system began in 2006 while working as a victim advocate for the Kane County State’s Attorney’s Office. In this role, she guided victims of violent crimes through the criminal justice system. While Judge Camargo enjoyed this position, it became apparent to her that her calling in the criminal justice system was to take a more active role and advocate for her community. After graduating from law school in 2010, Judge Camargo returned to the Kane County State’s Attorney’s Office as an Assistant State’s Attorney. She served in this role for eleven years. During her career as a prosecutor, she tried over 100 cases to trial, including victim sensitive crimes, drug trafficking cases and murders.
Judge Camargo is currently assigned to the Aurora Branch Court where she oversees traffic and misdemeanor cases. She takes great pride in serving her community. She strives to restore the community’s faith in the criminal justice system, and she does so with her ability to communicate in Spanish with the Latinx community, providing remote access to the courtroom, and most importantly by ensuring that all parties appearing before her understand the court process and have an opportunity to be heard.
Judge Camargo’s accomplishments are in part due to the unfettered support provided by her parents, Heriberto and the late Sandra Camargo. Their tenacity to succeed, and sacrifices made when they immigrated to the United States from Mexico helped instill in Judge Camargo a strong work integrity, a devotion to serve, and the ability to persevere. She is the first in her family to obtain a college and doctorate degree.
Judge Camargo is a proud graduate of Northern Illinois University (2005) and Northern Illinois University College of Law (2010). Judge Camargo is a lifelong resident of Aurora, IL.
César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández
Gregory Williams Chair in Civil Rights and Civil Liberties
Ohio State University Michael E. Moritz College of Law
César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández is the Gregory Williams Chair in Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at Ohio State University where he writes and teaches about the intersection of criminal and immigration law. He has published two books, Migrating to Prison: America’s Obsession with Locking Up Immigrants (2019), and Crimmigration Law (2015). A second edition of Crimmigration Law is scheduled for release in 2021. His scholarly articles about the right to counsel for migrants in the criminal justice system, immigration imprisonment, and race-based immigration policing have appeared in the California Law Review, UCLA Law Review, BYU Law Review, Maryland Law Review, and Georgetown Immigration Law Journal, among others. He also publishes the blog crimmigration.com.
César’s analyses of policies affecting migrants regularly appear in media in the United States and abroad. He has published opinion articles in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, Time, and many other venues. Through hundreds of interviews, he has lent his expert analysis to journalists in Brazil, Canada, Germany, South Africa, and the United States. He also served two terms as a member of the American Bar Association’s Commission on Immigration.
César’s accomplishments have been widely recognized. In 2020, he delivered the Buck Colbert Franklin Memorial Civil Rights Lecture at the University of Tulsa, named after the pioneering African-American lawyer who devoted countless hours to assisting victims of the Tulsa Race Riots. In 2019, the Civil Rights Education and Enforcement Center honored him with its Challenging Discrimination Award. He is a past Fulbright Scholar and has been a scholar-in-residence at the University of California, Berkeley and Texas Southern University. He is also a past recipient of the Derrick A. Bell, Jr. Award by the Association of American Law Schools Section on Minority Groups, an honor issued to a “junior faculty member who, through activism, mentoring, colleagueship, teaching and scholarship, has made an extraordinary contribution to legal education, the legal system or social justice.” César was born and raised in McAllen, Texas, and is of counsel to García & García Attorneys at Law, P.L.L.C.
-MODERATOR-
Professor Anita Maddali
Interim Assistant Dean
NIU College of Law
Professor Maddali teaches immigration and constitutional law, and directs the NIU College of Law legal clinic.
Professor Maddali’s research explores the impact of laws and policies on immigrant families. Her articles have been published in the Indiana Law Journal, American University Law Review, the University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform, and the Brown Journal of World Affairs, and have been cited in state and federal court decisions.
Prior to joining NIU, Professor Maddali was an Equal Justice Works fellow and later clinical professor at Northwestern University School of Law’s Children and Family Justice Center. She represented women and unaccompanied minors fleeing persecution from Latin American, African and Middle Eastern countries. Additionally, Professor Maddali litigated education, employment discrimination and immigration cases for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and developed a poverty law clinic while working as a visiting clinical professor at DePaul University College of Law. Professor Maddali served as member of the Board of Directors for the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights from 2015-2021 and as Vice Chair for the last three years of her term.
Professor Maddali received a Master of Divinity from the University of Chicago in 2021. As part of her studies, during the fall and winter of 2020-2021, she provided spiritual care and counseling at a hospital in Chicago to patients and their families, many of whom were experiencing loss, grief, and trauma. She culminated her studies with a thesis that explored shame in the context of illness.
