Marielys Padua Soto

Marielys Padua Soto is the Academic Programs Officer for the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples at the University of Arizona Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Program. Ms. Padua Soto received her B.S. in Industrial Microbiology from the University of Puerto Rico (2017), her JD from the Pontifical Catholic University of Puerto Rico School of Law (2020), and her LLM in Human Rights from Central European University in Vienna, Austria (2022). She has published several legal articles, including “Deportation of Lawful Permanent Residents: A Constitutional Right to Legal Counsel”, “The Case of Diamond v. Chakrabarty: A Look at Microbiology through the Lens of Patent Law”, and most recently her master’s thesis on “Xenophobia from an Evolutionary Biology Perspective.” During her academic years, she interned with different non-governmental organizations in the United States, including the South Texas Pro Bono Asylum Representation Project, where she was assigned to the children’s team, serving the immigrant children of the Southwest Key Programs of the Office of Refugee Resettlement shelters located in Brownsville, Texas.  Additionally, she interned with the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project, where she was assigned to the adults’ team, and she assisted asylum seekers by drafting asylum applications while they awaited their turn for their credible fear interviews at the Arizona, USA/Sonora, Mexico border. She also interned briefly with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, where she conducted legal research on the Immigration and Naturalization Act (INA) and its application to different cases. In 2020, she worked for the International Rescue Committee, leading the Release Project of Atlanta, Georgia. This project served immigrants in detention and deportation proceedings. She also oversaw the filing of humanitarian parole and Fraihat petitions. Additionally, she provided core immigration services, including adjustment of status, work employment authorizations, travel documents, citizenship, and family reunification petitions. In 2021, she worked for the Department of International Refugee Law and Migration Law at the International Institute of Humanitarian Law in San Remo, Italy, where she supported the implementation of courses on refugee law, migration law, statelessness, internal displacement, and climate change. She completed the first International School on Climate Migration from the SOAS University of London. Ms. Padua Soto is fluent in English, Spanish, and Italian. Recently, she was the recipient of a fellowship award by the American University in Cairo, Egypt for the Migration and Refugee Studies program of the Middle East