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Jennifer Turner

Principal Human Rights Researcher

ACLU Human Rights Program

Bio

Jennifer Turner (@JennTurner) is the principal human rights researcher in the ACLU’s Human Rights Program. She conducts documentation research and advocacy on human rights violations in the United States, with a focus on criminal justice, policing, national security, racial justice, women’s rights, children’s rights, and immigrants’ rights. She is the author of numerous ACLU reports, including A Living Death, on life without parole sentences for nonviolent offenses; Island of Impunity, which documents police brutality and failure to police domestic and sexual violence in Puerto Rico; and Blocking Faith, Freezing Charity, on how terrorism financing policies undermine Muslims’ religious freedom and chill charitable giving. She also carries out advocacy before the U.N. Human Rights Council, human rights treaty monitoring bodies and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and monitors military commission hearings at Guantánamo Bay.

Prior to joining the ACLU, Jennifer was a fellow in the Women’s Rights Division of Human Rights Watch, where she researched and reported on abuses against Asian migrant domestic workers in the Middle East. She has also worked in the asylum program of Human Rights First assisting refugees seeking asylum in the U.S. to obtain pro bono legal representation. Jennifer is a graduate of Yale University and New York University Law School.