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Floor Speech
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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, today, the Senate will vote to confirm Monica Ramirez Almadani to the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.
Born in La Mirada, CA, Ms. Ramirez Almadani received her A.B. from Harvard University in 2001 and her J.D. from Stanford Law School in 2004. She then clerked for Judge Warren J. Ferguson on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit from 2004 to 2005. Ms. Ramirez Almadani began her legal career in 2005 at the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project, practicing immigration and civil rights litigation for 4 years, including successfully arguing before the Ninth Circuit. She then served the Justice Department for 6 years in a variety of roles, including counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division, deputy chief of staff to the Deputy Attorney General, and assistant U.S. attorney--AUSA--in the U.S. attorney's office for the Central District of California. As an AUSA, she prosecuted child pornography, human trafficking, narcotics, immigration fraud, public corruption, and other serious crimes.
In 2015, then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris appointed Ms. Ramirez Almadani Special Assistant Attorney General to oversee the California Justice Department's Criminal Division and the Division of Recidivism Reduction and Reentry. Then, in 2017, she joined a large law firm as special counsel, focusing on white collar criminal defense, internal investigations, and complex commercial litigation, in addition to pro bono immigration work. She then became codirector of the University of California, Irvine School of Law's Immigrant Rights Clinic from 2019 to 2021. She currently serves as the president and CEO of Public Counsel, the largest public interest law firm in the country.
The American Bar Association rated Ms. Ramirez Almadani ``well qualified'' to serve on the Central District of California. The late Senator Feinstein strongly supported her nomination, as does Senator Padilla.
I will be supporting this outstanding nominee, and I urge all of my colleagues to do the same.
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