Alfonso Aguilar
President, Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles and International Human Rights Group
Alfonso Aguilar is the President of the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles, a Washington, DC based advocacy group, which promotes conservative values and ideals within the Latino community and works to integrate Latinos into fuller and more active participation and leadership in the conservative movement. He is also the President of the International Human Rights Group, a non-profit legal foundation accredited before the Organization of American States (OAS), which seeks to defend and protect political rights, religious freedom, and the dignity of the human person through the Inter-American System of Human Rights. He has been a member of the Holy See’s delegation to the the last four General Assemblies of the OAS.
Mr. Aguilar is the first and former Chief of the U.S. Office of Citizenship. Appointed by President George W. Bush, Mr. Aguilar was responsible for developing and promoting public initiatives and programs to educate immigrants about the rights and responsibilities of citizenship and encourage their integration into American civic culture. He led the effort to develop the new naturalization test of the United States, which took effect on October 1, 2008.
Before joining the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in 2003, Mr. Aguilar served in numerous high-level government positions in the Bush Administration and the government of Puerto Rico, including Deputy Director of Public Affairs at U.S. Department of Energy, Executive Director of the Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration and Press Secretary to former Governor Pedro Rossello of Puerto Rico.
Mr. Aguilar is also a well known policy and political analyst. He has published Op-Ed columns, and is regularly quoted in major national newspapers and digital media outlets such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Washington Post, Politico, the Houston Chronicle, the Miami Herald, and the La Opinion of Los Angeles. He appears frequently in national TV networks, including Fox News, MSNBC, CNN, Univision, Telemundo, and CNN en Espanol.
Mr. Aguilar has a B.A. from the University of Notre Dame and a J.D. from the University of Puerto Rico. He is a member of the Puerto Rico Bar, the Board of Advisors of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, the Board of Directors of Americans United for Life (AUL) and the International Advisory Task Force of Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF).