Natalie L. Cadwalader

Biography

Natalie Cadwalader is an experienced removal defense attorney, having represented detained asylum-seeking adults, families, and children at various non-profit organizations in Texas, Arizona, and Southern California. She started her legal career as an Equal Justice Works Fellow at the American Bar Association's South Texas Pro Bono Asylum Representation Project (ABA ProBAR), where she represented children unlawfully placed in adult ICE detention and children transferred to ICE detention on their 18th birthdays. She has since worked for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project, Al Otro Lado, Human Rights First, and the American Bar Association's Children's Immigration Law Academy (ABA CILA).

Prior to joining CWSL, Professor Cadwalader achieved success coordinating NGOs to advocate before the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (UN WGEID), highlighting the lack of public-facing information about incommunicado detainees in CBP custody. Subsequently, DHS changed its ICE detainee locator to allow limited searches of individuals in CBP custody. Her other efforts before the UN WGEID also produced admissions from Salvadoran government that individuals held in CECOT were detained under U.S. government custody. Professor Cadwalader has additionally coordinated briefing for U.S.-based NGOs before the Mexican Supreme Court in a case challenging the Mexican government's agreement to implement the Remain in Mexico policy.

Professor Cadwalader's scholarship focuses on themes of (1) enforced disappearances of international migrants and asylum seekers as a border management strategy; (2) and immigration lawyers' strategic use of advocacy before international human rights bodies. Her work has been published in the Santa Clara Law Review and the Journal on Migration and Human Security. Professor Cadwalader has been quoted in English language media by the New York Times, U.S. Capital & Main, National Public Radio's All Things Considered and affiliate stations KQED and WLNR (regarding pending complaints before the WGEID and the aftermath of Venezuelan men's release from CECOT), NBC News, BuzzFeed News, and the Wall Street Journal, as well as in Spanish language media by Hora Cero, Infobae, and Animal Político.

Professor Cadwalader holds a J.D. with a certificate in international law from the University of California, Berkeley and BAs in Linguistics and Latin American Studies from Brigham Young University. She received a certificate in Mexican Public Law & Policy jointly from the University of Arizona and the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Professor Cadwalader speaks Spanish.