About

​Andrea J. Garcia grew up in Kansas City, Missouri, where she was raised with the Midwestern values of hard work and honesty. She is a third-generation Mexican American raised in Kansas City’s Westside, a historic Mexican neighborhood. All of her ancestors came from Northern and Central Mexico over 100 years ago, during the Mexican Revolution. They settled in Kansas City for employment opportunities in the railroad, meatpacking, and service industries, but also because it was the only part of the city that they were allowed to live in due to racial segregation.  

Despite such obstacles, Ms. Garcia’s family has a long history of public service. Both her grandfathers served in the US Army in post-World War II Japan and during the Korean War. Her grandmother worked as a teacher’s aide at a public school for children whose first language was Spanish.  

Unfortunately, de facto segregation persisted during her childhood. Due to the practice of assimilation, her parents were disinherited from the Spanish language due to racial intolerance in Kansas City. The Westside was considered an undesirable neighborhood for those experiencing socioeconomic hardships and for public housing residents. Regrettably, by the time Ms. Garcia began elementary school in the 1980s, the Kansas City public school system had been poorly maintained and underfunded due to years of federal civil rights litigation over school desegregation.  
 

Her father, a locomotive engineer for the Union Pacific Railroad, and her mother, a pediatric nurse, both made sacrifices so that she could attend private school. She attended an all-girls preparatory high school, Notre Dame de Sion, then went on to complete her Bachelor's of Political Science and a minor in French at the University of Missouri-Columbia. She went on to obtain her law degree at DePaul College of Law in Chicago, Illinois, with a certification in International Human Rights Law.  

On her own initiative, and given the injustices she and her ancestors experienced, Ms. Garcia booked a one-way trip to Mexico to learn Spanish. She helped compile data on human rights abuses for an Oaxacan-based nongovernmental organization, Liga Mexicana de los Derechos Humanos, for presentation at the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights in Washington, D.C.  

After working in Oaxaca, Mexico, on social justice issues, she returned to the United States to begin her career in immigration law.  

Her extensive travels and work abroad led her to choose a career as an immigration attorney. She lived in both Thailand and Mexico. She has extensively traveled the world. Her nontraditional legal experiences continue to define her. She is highly independent in her judgment and unafraid to contemplate the unfamiliar. 

Her personal background demonstrates that she is ready to interpret the law and administer justice for the state of California with civility, integrity, and candor, upholding the underpinnings of the judicial system in the State of California.  

These experiences permeate her approach to the law, rooted in empathy, integrity, and the fair administration of justice in furtherance of the rule of law. These experiences enrich her ability to serve as a judge.