Biography

Linda Y. Rivas was born in Mexico and raised in El Paso, Texas from the age of 4. She is a single mother to a smart and energetic 7-year-old boy, Nicholas.

Linda attended The University of Texas at El Paso and received a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology with a minor in legal reasoning. She received a Juris Doctor from Loyola College of Law in New Orleans where she tailored her experience to focus on immigration law, from her coursework to a legal internship with the Department of
Justice, Executive Office of Immigration Review under Judge Wayne Stogner.

Linda’s first job as an attorney was the West Texas VAWA Legal Supervisor at the Paso del Norte Civil Rights Project where she worked in immigration law under the VAWA and U-VISA programs and engaged in domestic violence advocacy.

Linda currently serves as the Executive Director and Managing Attorney of Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center where she is focused on serving the needs of asylum seekers, and the immigrant and refugee community in El Paso, West Texas, and New Mexico.

Additionally, Linda helped start the Borderland Immigration Council (BIC) in the summer of 2016; BIC, a local group of attorneys and advocacy groups formed to help address the dire situation of due process abuses, family separation and abuse of discretion
that immigrants and refugees face during the course of their legal immigration cases.

In 2018, she represented and led efforts to reunite families who were separated as a result of the zero-tolerance policy and has been quoted in various national media outlets, to include: The Rachel Maddow Show, The New Yorker, Washington Post, Texas Tribune, and Harper’s Bazaar.