Saúl Ramírez – Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans

About Saúl Ramírez

Saúl Ramírez was born in the United States and raised in Santa Ana, California, a predominantly working-class, Spanish-speaking immigrant community. His parents emigrated from El Sabino, a rural town in Guanajuato, Mexico, where both completed only grade school. After more than forty years of supporting their six children through low-paying, precarious work, they continue to inspire Saúl’s pursuit of scholarship in service of legal and social justice.

Saúl graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2016, majoring in Chicano Studies and Ethnic Studies and minoring in Education and Global Poverty & Practice. Legal internships during college solidified his desire to pursue law as a means of addressing the immigration- and criminal-law consequences affecting his family and community.

He received his J.D. from Yale Law School in 2019, where he was awarded the C. LaRue Munson Prize for his work in the Advanced Criminal Justice Clinic, Advanced Sentencing Clinic, Advanced Worker and Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic, and Challenging Mass Incarceration Clinic. He also served as vice president of the Latinx Law Students Association, alumni chair of First Generation Professionals, and co-director of the Rebellious Lawyering Conference. At Yale, he worked as a research assistant for Professors James Forman Jr. and Issa Kohler-Hausmann, and Professor Monica Bell’s mentorship inspired him to pursue doctoral training in sociology.

Saúl is completing his Ph.D. in Sociology at Harvard University under the supervision of Professor Mary Waters. His dissertation examines deportation, return migration, and immigrant incorporation through qualitative life-history interviews with Mexican deportees. He is currently the Laura E. Gómez Teaching Fellow on Latinx People and the Law (2026–2028) at UCLA School of Law. Through his scholarship and teaching, he hopes to contribute to a deeper understanding of deportation and its consequences while mentoring future generations of students, especially fellow New Americans.