L. Patricia Ice

Director, MIRA Legal Project
p.ice@yourmira.org

Ms. Ice served for two years as a United States Peace Corps volunteer English teacher in Porto Novo, Benin, West Africa in the 1980s. Later, after teaching English in the Philippines, Haiti, Honduras and the United States, Ice developed an interest in immigration law and began a practice in her native Detroit, Michigan.

In 1998 she moved to Mississippi to work as a reference librarian at the Mississippi College School of Law.  The following year she began practicing immigration law in conjunction with the Catholic Diocese of Jackson and the Mississippi United Methodist Hispanic Ministries in Scott County.

After the formation of the MIRA, Ice volunteered for the organization and became a board member. She joined the MIRA staff in 2006 and created its Legal Project after being awarded an Equal Justice Works Katrina Legal Fellowship.

Ice is a long time member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association and occasionally writes an immigration advice column that appears in The Jackson Advocate and the Spanish language newspaper, La Noticia.

She holds a B.A. in History from Spelman College, an M.A. in Linguistics from Ohio University, and M.L.I.S. (Library Science) and J.D. (Law) degrees from Wayne State University. Ice is an attorney admitted to practice law in Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico and the United States Supreme Court.