Camille J. Mackler

Camille J. Mackler, Esq. is the Founder and Executive Director of Immigrant ARC (I-ARC), a collaborative of over 80 legal service providers in New York State. In that role, Ms. Mackler works with community leaders, legal service providers, state and local governments, law enforcement agencies, and Federal agencies and policy makers to ensure immigrants have access to a fair and efficient immigration system. She is also the Senior Visiting Fellow at the Truman Center for National Policy, where she is working on researching and highlighting intersections between immigration policy, national security, and foreign relations.

Prior to launching Immigrant ARC, Ms. Mackler was the Director of Immigration Legal Policy at the New York Immigration Coalition. There, she led advocacy campaigns to improve laws and policies for the benefit of immigrants across New York State. Ms. Mackler has led a number of important campaigns and efforts, including advocating for – and ultimately helping coordinate – the evacuation of thousands of Afghans after the Taliban takeover in 2021, coordinating legal efforts to respond to busing of migrants to New York City and New York State since 2022, for detained asylum seekers during family separation at the border in 2018, and at JFK airport during the Muslim travel ban in 2017. She has successfully advocated for protections for immigrants at the State and Federal level, including increasing State and City funding for legal services from $10 Million in 2013 to over $100 Million today, drafting legislation creating the first right to universal representation of immigrants in the country, and engaging in Administrative Advocacy to push for a wide range of policy changes and new protections for immigrants in the United States. Ms. Mackler is on the Steering Committees for the Evacuate Our Allies coalition and the AfghanEvac coalition.

Ms. Mackler is a frequent lecturer on topics of immigration law and policy and has authored numerous reports, OpEds, and articles on federal immigration policy. She has testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the New York State legislature, and the New York City Council on issues affecting immigrants, and has argued cases before US Federal Courts of Appeals and US Immigration Courts. She is a graduate of Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service and New York Law School.