Alcira Silva Hava

Alcira Silva Hava is a US Externalization Researcher at Human Rights Watch, focused on monitoring and documenting efforts to externalize migration management and border controls. Alcira previously worked for the Refugee and Migrants Rights division as a Leonard H. Sandler Fellow, where she documented deportations of Cubans and other third-country nationals from the US to Mexico. The report was the first to highlight that about 70% of all US third country removals have been to Mexico but that Mexico’s involvement in these transfers is the least transparent of all the countries receiving third-country nationals.

Prior to joining Human Rights Watch, Alcira earned a J.D. from Columbia Law School, where she was a student advocate with TrialWatch at Columbia’s Human Rights Clinic and Editor-in-Chief of A Jailhouse Lawyer’s Manual. She also provided direct representation to individuals in immigration detention as an intern with Brooklyn Defender Services and Make the Road New York. Alcira is a graduate of the University of Saint Andrews and a native Spanish speaker.