Dana Leigh Marks

Dana Leigh Marks has been an Immigration Judge in San Francisco since January of 1987.  Since 1999 she has served seven two-year terms as President and two two-year terms as Vice President of the NAIJ.

On behalf of NAIJ, she has published numerous scholarly and general circulation articles and has testified to Congress regarding the need to restructure our nation’s Immigration Courts to safeguard judicial independence. Her focus also includes zealously advocating for increased resources and improved working conditions at the Immigration Courts. She frequently speaks to the press regarding Immigration Court issues, making television and radio appearances in English and Spanish. She actively represents the Immigration Judge corps with EOIR and OCIJ to assure the judges’ perspective is represented on all matters affecting judges. She served as lead negotiator to achieve our first collective bargaining agreement and has represented NAIJ and individual members in grievance and discipline negotiations. Judge Marks taught Immigration Law as an adjunct law professor for over a decade and continues to lecture extensively on various immigration law topics to judges, attorneys and journalists at seminars nationally.

Judge Marks was honored in 2006 as a Leader in the Human Rights Struggle by the East Bay Sanctuary Covenant for her years of public service and volunteer work; she received the Clara Foltz Feminist Society award for Woman Alumnae of the Year from Hastings College of the Law in 2002, an honor bestowed on her by the students who found her to be an inspirational graduate; and the Phillip Burton Immigration and Civil Rights Award from the Immigrant Legal Resource Center in 1999 for her judicial leadership, long standing dedication to immigrants and commitment to legal education. Judge Marks continues to serve Hastings as an active member of the Alumni Mentor program.