Senior Associate
Refugee Protection Program

As Senior Associate in the Refugee Protection Program, Ruthie Epstein’s research and advocacy are currently focused on immigration detention. She has toured more than 20 immigration detention facilities across the country and works closely with a wide range of experts and advocates to press for meaningful reform of U.S. immigration detention practices. She is the author of Jails and Jumpsuits: Transforming the U.S. Immigration Detention System – A Two-Year Review (2011) and Promises to the Persecuted: The Refugee Crisis in Iraq Act (2009).

Previously, Ruthie helped to run Human Rights First’s pro bono legal representation program for indigent asylum seekers in New York and New Jersey. She also spent two years advocating for improved U.S. policies impacting the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees displaced by the war. Prior to joining Human Rights First, Ruthie worked for seven years as a freelance copy-editor for Vanity Fair and Rolling Stone and performed as a dancer with choreographers David Neumann and Karinne Keithley.

Ruthie holds a Master’s of International Affairs from Columbia University in New York and an A.B. in history from Washington University in St. Louis.