Introduction to Bond Proceedings

Grisel Ruiz is a Supervising Attorney in San Francisco where she focuses on the intersection between immigration law and criminal law. This includes advising attorneys and advocates on the immigration consequences of criminal offenses, training on removal defense, and supporting local and statewide campaigns to push back on immigration enforcement. In addition to technical assistance, training, and campaign support in these areas, Grisel also helps lead the ILRC's state legislative work. Grisel is currently the Board Chair for Freedom for Immigrants (formerly CIVIC), a nonprofit that advocates for detained immigrants.

Prior to working with the ILRC, Grisel was a litigation associate at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP and a Stimson Fellow housed at the UC Davis Law School Immigration Clinic and California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation. As a legal fellow, she co-founded “Know Your Rights” programs at local immigration detention centers, for which she received an award from Cosmo for Latinas.

Grisel is an immigrant herself and earned her law degree from the University of Chicago where she received the Tony Patiño Fellowship. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Notre Dame, where she dual majored in Political Science and Spanish Literature. Grisel is admitted to the bar in California is fluent in Spanish.

Anita Gupta is a senior staff attorney based in Austin, Texas, where she focuses on building the capacity of legal practitioners in Texas to represent immigrants in immigration and criminal proceedings. She conducts trainings on immigration law, provides legal expertise through the ILRC's Attorney of the Day program, and writes practice manuals and advisories for practitioners across the country. She also works with advocates and local officials throughout Texas to strategize, pass, and implement local policies that reduce the arrest-to-deportation pipeline. She focuses on issues related to removal defense, federal immigration enforcement, and the intersectionality of the immigration and criminal legal systems.  

Prior to joining the ILRC, Anita worked in private practice in Austin, specializing in removal defense and humanitarian-based immigration relief. She has also worked at American Gateways and the National Immigrant Justice Center, where she represented low-income immigrants in a variety of matters before the immigration courts, USCIS, and ICE.  

Anita obtained her Bachelor's Degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and she earned her law degree from DePaul University in Chicago. During law school, Anita participated in DePaul's Asylum and Refugee Law clinic, and she interned at the Legal Assistance Foundation and the National Immigrant Justice Center. Anita is admitted to the Illinois bar.