2026 Equal Justice Conference

Cristian is the Economic Justice Director at Texas Immigration Law Council where he leads the design and implementation of a program to expand access to civil legal services for low-income Texans through innovation, including Community Justice workers. He is doing this through standing up a statewide network of attorney and non-attorney fellows at existing legal service providers. Prior to joining Texas Immigration Law Council, Cristian served as a supervising immigration attorney at RAICES in San Antonio. He led a team of advocates defending immigrants from deportation. He also led a project assisting transgender women detained at the South Texas Detention Complex with access to counsel and advocacy. Additionally, he developed and ran an emergency shelter in Tijuana for a self-formed group of LGBTQ+ asylum seekers, as well as a temporary shelter for released transgender women in San Antonio. Cristian graduated from the University of Texas School of Law in 2017. During law school, he worked at the ACLU of Southern California’s Immigrants’ Rights Project. He also led a pro bono program that assisted transgender people in correcting their names and gender markers on their identity documents.