Professor Huyen Pham

Huyen Pham is a Professor of Law at the Texas A&M University School of Law.  Her scholarship focuses on immigration law, asking important questions about what the substance of immigration laws should be and who should be enforcing the laws.  Published in the New York University Law Review, the Georgetown Law Journal, and the Washington & Lee Law Review, among other publications, her research has been cited by media outlets (including the Washington Post and MSNBC), and by state legislative and judicial branches; she has also been invited to present her work in front of governmental bodies like U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and Vietnam’s National Assembly in Hanoi.  Currently, she and her economist co-author are studying the effects of 287(g) agreements (that deputize local police to enforce immigration laws) on the policing behavior of state troopers, who aren’t signatories to the agreements; this project is funded by the Sage Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation.  Pham was a Fulbright Scholar in 2010-2011, teaching at the University of Law and Economics in Ho Chi Minh City, and returns to Vietnam regularly, to teach and present research.  In 2018, in recognition of her “extraordinary achievement in original research or scholarship,” she received the Eminent Scholar Award, given jointly by TAMU and the Women Former Students’ Network.

Before teaching, she was an assistant attorney general and counsel to the Missouri Ethics Commission.  She was an associate for Hill & Barlow in Boston and was a law clerk for the Hon. George A. O’Toole, U.S. District Court in Boston.  After college, she received an Echoing Green Public Service Fellowship to start a school in the Vietnamese refugee camp in Palawan, Philippines.  Pham received her J.D. From Harvard Law School and her A.B degree from Harvard College.