Faculty and Administration Profiles

Martha Laura Garcia-Izaguirre

About

Martha Laura Garcia-Izaguirre (Laura) joins Loyola’s Health Justice Project as a Supervising Attorney and Clinical Fellow. Laura comes to Loyola with several years of experience providing direct immigration legal services to underserved immigrant populations across New Mexico and Illinois. As an immigrant herself, the experiences that many of her clients share resonate with her and her family’s own experiences and her main goal as an attorney and advocate is to uplift their stories and give back to the communities that supported her. Similarly, if anything has become clear to Laura in her years of practice, it’s that people seeking services often need more than one type of assistance and that when wraparound services are provided, people are able to find more long term stability. As a member of the Health Justice Project, Laura is able to put her skills to use by adopting a holistic approach and collaborating with medical and social work professionals.  
 
Laura is a Loyola alum who obtained her J.D. in 2017 and focused her studies on Public Interest Law. She began her legal career as an Equal Justice Works fellow with the New Mexico Immigrant Law Center (NMILC), where she worked on strengthening community ties with organizations serving immigrant populations across New Mexico and expanding NMILC’s service area into rural parts of the state. After her fellowship ended, Laura stayed on with NMILC as a Supervising Attorney, where she oversaw NMILC’s pro se clinics and continued to represent clients in administrative and removal cases. Laura made her way back to Chicago in 2021, when she joined the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) as a staff attorney within its Immigrant Legal Defense Project. Not long after joining NIJC, she became a Supervising Attorney and the Legal Supervisor for NIJC’s VAWA/U Visa Pro Bono Project. In that capacity, she worked with pro bono attorneys across the U.S. to train and guide them through representing immigrant survivors of domestic violence and other serious crimes. Throughout her career, she has taught several CLE courses and been a contact for Spanish-speaking media regarding legal issues affecting immigrant communities.  
 
Laura received a B.A. in International Relations with a minor in History and Ibero-American Studies from St. Louis University-Madrid. In 2019, she was awarded the Emerging Leader Award from her alma mater for her work as an immigration advocate. She is licensed to practice law in Illinois. Laura is passionate about empowering her community and helping individuals navigate systems that are often designed to perpetuate oppressive practices. She hopes that through her practice and advocacy, she can shed light on these unjust patterns and encourage others to seek social justice. 

Degrees

B.A. in International Relations with a minor in History and Ibero-American Studies from St. Louis University-Madrid
J.D. Loyola University Chicago School of Law