Sarah J. Diaz
Director of the Immigration and Human Rights Clinic; Co-Director of Loyola's Holistic Immigration Hub; Associate Director of the Center for the Human Rights of Children
Sarah J. Diaz. J.D., LL.M is the Director of the Immigration and Human Rights Clinic, Co-Director of Loyola's Holistic Immigration Hub, and Associate Director of the Center for the Human Rights of Children at Loyola University Chicago School of Law. Prof. Diaz teaches and practices in the areas of immigration, refugee law, and international human rights law. She has worked at the intersection of child migration and human rights for twenty years. Before joining Loyola, Prof.Diaz served as the National Case Director for the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights, practiced immigration law at the National Immigrant Justice Center, and taught clinical programs at DePaul University College of Law. She is a graduate of DePaul Law School and Northwestern Law School's LL.M. Program in International Human Rights.
Throughout her career, Prof. Diaz has participated in several initiatives designed to create access to justice for migrants on a local, state, and international level including authoring the Illinois Voices Act, serving on the Illinois Human Trafficking Task Force, developing and co-leading a DACA legal services collaborative that directed policy feedback for the Obama Administration, and providing expert opinions to the UN Working Group on the Use of Private Security Companies in the context of migrant detention. Prof.Diaz was awarded the Kolvenbach Award for Engaged Teaching in 2023 for her commitment to transformative education at Loyola University. She has also won awards for her scholarship, including Northwestern’s Charles Haney Hide Award in Public International Law. Her most recent publication, a co-edited book entitled Kids in Cages: Surviving & Resisting Child Migrant Detention, was published by the Arizona University Press in Fall 2024.
Education
BS, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
JD, DePaul University College of Law
LLM, Northwestern University School of Law
Courses Taught
Immigration Detention Project
Immigration Practicum
Immigration Law
International Human Rights
Publications/Research Listings
Sarah J. Diaz. Hague Abduction Considerations for the Hague Adoption Lawyer, in The International Adoption Sourcebook, (AILA 2 Ed. 20201)
Diaz, S. & Schrobilgen, M. The Role of Public Health in the Rule of Law: The Cautionary Tale of Title 42 Expulsions. Harvard Public Health Review. 2021; 30.
Sarah J. Diaz, Hague Abduction Law for the Contemporary Immigrant Parent and Child, 2 AILA L.J. 107 (2020).
Diaz, S. & Schrobilgen, M. 2020 “COVID-19’s Nefarious Toll on Migrant Children: Executive Overreach and a Framework to Prevent Abuse”, published in the online symposium Children's Rights in the Time of COVID-19, Center for the Human Rights of Children, Loyola University School of Law, November 17, 2020.
An Elusive Mandate: Enforcing the Prohibition on the Use of Child Soldiers, 39 CHILD. LEGAL RTS. J. 263 (2019).
Failing the Refugee Child: Gaps in the Refugee Convention Relating to Children, 20 GEO. J. GENDER & L. 605 (2019).
Parent-Child Border Separations Violate International Law: Why it matters and what can be done to protect children and families, GEO. HUM. RTS. INST., Perspectives in Human Rights No. 6 (Aug. 2018).
Unequal Protection: Disparate Treatment of Immigrant Crime Victims in Cook, the Collar Counties and Beyond, DePaul Asylum & Immigration Law Clinic, October 2014 (with clinic students G. Arruela, C. Perez, A. Valenzuela and K. Zurita).
Re-Interpreting Postville: A Legal Perspective, 2 DEPAUL J. SOC.JUST.31 (2008) (with S. Albiol and R. L. Chan)