Emi MacLean (she/her)

Emi MacLean is a senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Northern California where she focuses on criminal justice and immigrant rights litigation. She is counsel for plaintiffs in NTPSA v. Noem and Ramos v. Mayorkas, legal challenges to the termination of Temporary Protected Status; UFW Foundation v. Kern, a legal challenge to Kern County’s misdemeanor plea mill; Stiavetti v. Clendenin, a successful challenge to the State’s systemic prolonged detention of people deemed incompetent to stand trial in California’s jails; and Zepeda Rivas v. Jennings, a federal class action challenging conditions of confinement during the COVID pandemic which resulted in an injunction and the significant depopulation of two California immigration detention facilities. She is also coordinating some of the ACLU's work to ensure effective implementation of California’s Racial Justice Act.

Previously Emi served as a deputy public defender at the San Francisco Office of the Public Defender where she represented noncitizens in removal proceedings; an attorney and co-legal director with the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, where she litigated federal cases, represented individuals in removal proceedings, and advocated for policy reforms at the intersection of immigration and criminal law; an adjunct professor with the Immigrant Rights Clinics at the University of California at Irvine and UCLA; a legal officer with the Open Society Justice Initiative; and a staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights pursuing legal challenges and policy efforts to upend executive detention at Guantanamo and in CIA secret prisons.

She also worked with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF, or Doctors without Borders) in the coordination and management of an HIV/AIDS care and treatment project, and an emergency project responding to xenophobic violence, in South Africa; and in the leadership of the Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines in the United States.  

Emi graduated from Georgetown University Law Center and Harvard College.  

Emi believes in accountability; likes to get out in nature, bike, and hike; and wants to cultivate a community of joy and resistance.