Metzeri Camacho

Metzeri Camacho (B.A. 2018, Southwestern Adventist University; J.D. expected 2022) will intern this summer at the Refugee and Immigration Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES), a non-profit agency that promotes justice and provides free and low-cost legal services to underserved immigrant children, families, and refugees. RAICES operates on the national frontlines of the fight for immigrant rights. Metzeri will be working within the RAICES Children’s Program to aid unaccompanied minors in their petition for legal status. This includes drafting affidavits, assisting in translations and legal clinics, and conducting Know Your Rights presentations. During her time in Texas Law, Metzeri has participated in the Mithoff Pro-Bono Program including the Women in Immigration program and the Law for Black Lives Project. Metzeri also participated in the Pro Bono in January Clinic and assisted asylum seekers in the Karnes Residential Institution. Prior to law school, Metzeri worked as an English teacher in China where she was able to practice Mandarin and learn about the beautiful Chinese culture. During her undergraduate studies, Metzeri studied international relations and English literature abroad in London. After law school, Metzeri hopes to pursue a career in human rights.

Metzeris the recipient of the 2020 Orlando Letelier and Ronni Karpen Moffitt Endowed Presidential Scholarship in Law, to fund her work RAICES this summer. This scholarship honors the life and memory of former Chilean Ambassador Orlando Letelier and Ronni Karpen Moffitt, who were assassinated by agents of Augusto Pinochet’s military junta in a car bombing in Washington, DC, in 1976. In 1980, human rights lawyers Michael Tigar and Samuel Buffone successfully represented the families of Letelier and Moffitt. Tigar and Buffone won a precedent-setting $4.8 million settlement in a lawsuit against the Chilean government that allowed families of other victims of the Pinochet regime to seek damages. In 1992, Tigar donated his lawyer’s fees from the case to the University of Texas School of Law and to Boalt Hall, to establish the Letelier and Ronnie Karpen Moffitt Scholarships in Law. The endowment now funds summer fellowships for law students to perform human rights work at organizations furthering the goals of human rights and justice in Latin America, either in Latin America or working with Latin American populations.