Laura Vásquez

As the Legal Manager for the Family Reunification Project, Laura manages Justice in Motion’s transnational effort to reunite families that were separated during the zero-tolerance policy.

Prior to joining Justice in Motion, Laura represented migrant farmworkers and immigrants as an attorney in private practice as well as for not-for-profit organizations in the U.S. for over two and a half decades. While conducting outreach to migrant labor camps in Florida, Laura and her late

husband, attorney Miguel Montalvo, uncovered some of the first cases of human trafficking to be documented and prosecuted in the US. For ten years, Laura worked with U.S. based legal aid organizations, private attorneys and NGOs on the ground throughout Mexico helping develop and litigate transnational farm labor cases of national importance.

Presently located in southwest Florida, Laura is fully bilingual (Spanish and English) and bi- cultural, of Panamanian and U.S. heritage, with Mexico also as her adopted home. Laura has a B.A. in International Studies (Johns Hopkins University) and an M.A. in Latin American Studies and International Economics (Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS)) and a J.D. cum laude (State University of New York). She also had the privilege of working at the United Nations in Geneva and attending the Hague Academy of International Law in the Netherlands.