Michele Garnett McKenzie serves on the senior leadership team at The Advocates for Human Rights and is responsible for research, education and advocacy on the organization’s domestic priority issues, including migration, human trafficking, and policing. She joined the staff of The Advocates 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 serves on the national leadership team of the Immigration Advocates Network. She previously has served on the Minnesota Coalition Against Sexual Assault public policy committee and 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 has served as an adjunct clinical faculty member of William Mitchell 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.