The path that led Marielena Hincapié to Cornell Law School’s Migration and Human Rights Program began in Medellín, Colombia. She was three years old when her father, a textile worker recruited to a Rhode Island factory, brought the family to the United States. The youngest of 10 children raised by parents who worked long hours, she grew up with a clear message: we have a responsibility to leave this country better off than how we found it. That conviction, paired with her lived experience as an immigrant, would shape a career at the forefront of the nation’s most consequential immigration battles.
Hincapié entered Northeastern University School of Law already knowing she wanted to focus on immigrant workers, an unusual path for someone who didn’t know any lawyers growing up. After graduating, she moved to California for an internship and stayed for more than two decades. In 2000, she was recruited by the National Immigration Law Center (NILC), where she eventually became the organization’s first immigrant executive director.
During her 22 years at NILC, she helped shape litigation and policy strategies during pivotal years, combating restrictive state laws while championing pro-immigrant reforms. She played a central role in advocating for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), first advocating with the Obama administration to create the program, and then helping build the infrastructure necessary to implement it. When DACA came under threat, NILC helped lead the litigation that would keep it alive. “Seeing young people become teachers, homeowners, lawyers, and doctors… it was such a transformational program for those young immigrants,” she recalls.
Today, as a Fellow with the Migration and Human Rights Program, Hincapié is applying that experience in a different way. The Fellows program, she says, offers something rare in the immigration space: the chance to step back from constant crisis response and think more broadly, globally, and long term about migration and democracy.
Equally meaningful to her is the opportunity to work alongside an ideologically diverse cohort whose professional experiences span government, business, and advocacy. That mix, she says, creates a space where Fellows “struggle together, educate each other, learn with each other,” and develop ideas that may be possible now, in four or 10 years, or even decades into the future.
Alongside Fellows with deep government experience, Hincapié helped craft recommendations for the Biden administration’s “Keeping Families Together” program. The effort involved drafting a policy memo for the Administration while also working separately with the organizations leading the advocacy on the ground. The Fellows role in the policy rollout was an example of the Migration and Human Rights Program at its best: a multidisciplinary, non-partisan laboratory where Fellows, faculty, and students incubate ideas and move them quickly into practice.
Hincapié also collaborates with Cornell’s Brooks School of Public Policy on research exploring how rural and suburban communities in upstate New York can develop effective, inclusive immigration strategies. And she cherishes time with students, who she describes as “brilliant, curious, and eager to understand their role in a rapidly changing world.” Offering mentorship, she says, feels like planting seeds for the next generation of leaders.
Her commitment to reimagining immigration aligns with the Migration and Human Rights Program’s vision to reshape national and global debates. She frames migration as a catalyst for belonging and democratic renewal at a moment when democracy itself is under pressure.
“Immigration is a natural, global phenomenon. It will never end,” she says. “To meet this moment, we need creativity, new narratives, and spaces like this one where we can think together and imagine a more sustainable future.”