Gladis Molina

Gladis is a native of El Salvador and was brought to the U.S. in 1990, at age 10, to reunify with her parents. Until age 20, she lived as an undocumented immigrant. This experience both compelled and inspired Gladis to become an immigration attorney and advocate on behalf of immigrant children.

At age 25, Gladis first began working with immigrant children held in immigration detention as a summer law clerk for Catholic Charities in Los Angeles. After graduating from law school in 2006, she continued working with immigrant children as a staff attorney for the South Texas Pro Bono Asylum Representation Project (ProBAR) in the Rio Grande Valley. In 2008, she joined Kids in Need of Defense (KIND) in Los Angeles as a pro bono coordinator. In 2011, Gladis moved to Phoenix to serve as a managing attorney for the Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project (FIRRP), again focusing on children’s cases. As an attorney, she has represented children in Immigration Court and Juvenile Court, as well as before the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR).

In 2016, Gladis joined the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights. At the Young Center, Gladis has served within the Child Advocate Program, where attorneys and social workers work alongside to advocate for the best interests of immigrant children, grounding its work on the Convention on the Rights of the Child and centering the child’s agency and self-determination. In 2021, Gladis began serving as the Executive Director for the Young Center.

Gladis received her B.A. from California State University, Long Beach (CSULB) in 2002 and her J.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 2006. Before attending law school, Gladis was a Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute (CHCI) Public Policy Fellow at the U.S. Capitol in the office of then-Representative Xavier Becerra.