Carolina Martin Ramos

Carolina Martin Ramos is a human rights attorney with experience working in the trenches, shoulder-to-shoulder with community members. Carolina is a Mexica/Cherokee, two-spirit woman. Carolina is recognized as a fierce advocate and guerrera for land defenders and water protectors. Carolina is the outgoing Chair of the Board of Directors of the Water Protector Legal Collective (WPLC) and Executive Director of Justicia Digna where she focuses on human rights, environmental justice, and international Indigenous people’s rights.

Carolina advocates before local, state, federal, and international bodies including the United Nations on environmental justice issues such as green colonialism. Carolina’s work is inherently liberatory, transformational, cross-jurisdictional, cross border, decolonizing, and anti-colonial. Carolina believes that “otro mundo es possible” and works on developing cultures of belonging. As an attorney, Carolina has responded to multiple legal and humanitarian crises related to gender violence and forced displacement, including responding to the family separations under Zero Tolerance Policies in the border region. She worked with teams of attorneys on federal litigation suing the federal government for human rights and civil rights violations including Matter of Ms. L and the Aleman-Gonzalez case challenging prolonged detention.

Carolina is a true movement attorney and has volunteered at the Red Owl Legal Collective, now Water Protector Legal Collective (aka Legal Tent), at Oceti Sakowin, Standing Rock Sioux Nation, worked with asylum seekers at the U.S. – Mexico border region during “the surge” in 2014 and many subsequent events where caravans of asylum seekers faced human rights violations, family separations, and refoulement under Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP). She is widely recognized for her work with Maya and Indigenous migrants, survivors of human trafficking, and asylum seekers fleeing gender violence, and TSLGBTQ communities.