Fatma Marouf is a professor at Texas A&M School of Law and the founding director of the Immigrant Rights Clinic. She supervises students on cases involving deportation defense, asylum, and humanitarian applications. She also litigates federal cases involving the constitutional and civil rights of immigrants, including access to health care in immigration detention, abuses against detained immigrants, and prolonged detention. She served as a consultant to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees on a report related to LGBTQIA+ immigrants in detention and previously co-directed the Immigration Clinic at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She is also on the board of the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild.
Fatma writes extensively on issues related to immigration law. Her scholarship advances legal reforms and proposes litigation strategies aimed at improving the fairness of removal proceedings and reducing the use of detention. She has empirically examined the adjudication of federal immigration appeals, as well as regional variations in immigration enforcement. She was named a Bellow Scholar for engaging in empirical research that promotes access to justice. She is currently investigating issues at the intersection of immigration policies and public health.
Before entering academia, Fatma practiced immigration law in Los Angeles, clerked for the Hon. Consuelo B. Marshall, then Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, and worked as an attorney with California Rural Legal Assistance.
She received her law degree from Harvard Law School, her Master of Public Health in Epidemiology from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and her bachelor’s degree from Yale.