- Pritzker Fellows
- Current Fellows
- Katie Tobin
Katie Tobin
Former Advisor in the White House National Security Council
Biography
For the last three years, Katie Tobin served as President Biden’s top migration advisor in the National Security Council. Appointed as Deputy Assistant to the President and NSC Coordinator for the Los Angeles Declaration, Tobin led U.S. policy development on a wide-range of cross-border national security matters. During her tenure in the White House, she spearheaded the Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection, President Biden’s signature migration framework that was adopted by 21 countries in the Western Hemisphere in June 2022. She was also a lead architect of Operation Allies Welcome (2021), the Uniting for Ukraine humanitarian parole program (April 2022), the Venezuela Enforcement Initiative (October 2022), and the Safe Mobility Offices Initiative (June 2023). In the aviation sphere, she drove the launch of the Domestic Counter-Unmanned Aircraft Systems (C-UAS) National Action Plan in April 2022, the first whole-of-government strategy to protect against the nefarious use of commercial drones.
Prior to joining the Biden Administration, Tobin served for nearly a decade with the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), advising the United States and governments across Latin America and the Caribbean on refugee and migration response. She has also served as a Refugee Officer at the Department of Homeland Security and an attorney in private practice in Chicago. During law school, she clerked for Senator Edward Kennedy and Senator Richard Durbin on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. Katie started her career working at Annunciation House, an organization that runs migrant shelters on the U.S.-Mexico border.
In March 2024, Tobin returned home to Chicago to be closer to family. She currently serves as a nonresident scholar with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a senior advisor for WestExec Advisory LLC. She is also an active press contributor in print and TV media, including the Wall Street Journal and MSNBC.
Tobin earned her and her B.A. from Villanova University and J.D. from The Catholic University of America, Columbus School of Law.
Seminars
“U.S. Foreign Policy on Migration - How It Happens & Why It Matters: A View From the White House”
Immigration is currently polling as a top issue for voters this fall. My seminar will take this issue head-on but with a foreign policy lens. As President Biden’s top migration advisor in the White House National Security Council for the last three years, I have experienced first-hand that thoughtful diplomacy on this issue matters. During my seminar, I will guide students below our border and overseas to develop a deeper understanding of U.S. foreign policy on migration. We will discuss Venezuela and the humanitarian situation that is most directly impacting the U.S. border and cities like Chicago today. We will also consider U.S.-Mexico relations on migration and President Biden’s signature migration pact, the Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection. We will spend time studying how the U.S. is confronting the lucrative criminal smuggling industry, and on a more positive note, look at the technology innovations that are transforming refugee processing. Zooming out, we will explore the role U.S. leadership has historically played in shaping the global refugee response and how it stopped under the Trump Administration. We also grapple with the current political debate at home on immigration and discuss how domestic and foreign policy on this issue intersect.
Seminars are open to current UChicago students only.
One area of stark contrast between President Biden and former President Trump is their perspective on how the U.S. should engage on refugee issues. It was not always this way. I started my career serving as a U.S. Refugee Officer under the George W. Bush Administration. Back then, refugee issues enjoyed strong bipartisan support. During my time at UNHCR, I would meet regularly with Republican Members of Congress who cared deeply about protecting refugees. We will assess how this issue has become intensely politicized in the United States since the Trump Administration and the implications for refugees and U.S. reputation abroad.
*This seminar will take place on Wednesday, October 23. Katie will not have a seminar during the week of October 14.
Even for those of us working on the foreign policy side of the issue, the border cannot be ignored. While in the White House, I woke up every single morning to the border numbers in my inbox and spent the majority of the day working with a small interagency team to advance common-sense solutions to ease pressure there. With Congress unwilling to act, we were forced to get creative with the outdated tools we had at home and rely more on solutions in the region. This session will look at how foreign policy and domestic policy strategy on migration are inextricably tied. We will also discuss how the election results will impact our policies at home and abroad on this issue.
In 2023, I traveled to Mexico eight times on behalf of the White House, including the historic trip with Secretary Blinken during the Christmas holiday. This underscores just how important Mexico is as a partner to the Biden Administration on migration. The media often frames the relationship as transactional and suggests that we are pressuring Mexico to do our dirty work. That is far from my experience. As our lead negotiator with Mexico on migration, I found them to be a true partner and emerging leader in the region. Together, we launched creative new initiatives to manage the flow, like the Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, Venezuelan Program and a new partnership in Central America on root causes. Both of our countries have had to step up enforcement as well. This seminar will look at how the Biden Administration approached its relationship with Mexico on migration and how presidential elections in both of our countries this year will impact the future of our partnership.
Special Guest: Roberto Velasco Álvarez, Head of the North American Unit of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Mexico & University of Chicago Alum (MPP)
My single proudest achievement from the White House was creating the idea and then leading the negotiation for the Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection. This new migration pact was adopted by President Biden and 20 other leaders in June 2022. It was a rare and unifying moment in the Americas. During this session, we will analyze the impact of the LA Declaration’s three-pronged approach, which focuses on (1) stabilizing populations where they were; (2) expanding legal pathways for migration; and (3) humane border enforcement. Arguably, the most novel and impactful outcomes of the LA Declaration involve countries partnering to pair new legal pathways with increased enforcement, as well as the mobilization of new economic investment to strengthen frontline host countries. For the latter, International Financial Institutions are playing an increasingly important role. In June, the G7 will adopt the LA Declaration principles, globalizing this three-pronged approach. We will discuss what this means for President Biden’s legacy and opportunities moving forward for world leaders to better coordinate on migration.
*This seminar will take place on Tuesday, November 12 at 3:30pm.
During my three years covering migration for President Biden, Venezuela was our number one challenge. With 7.7 million people displaced, Venezuela is the largest displacement crisis in the world, surpassing even Ukraine and Syria in its magnitude. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, most Venezuelans settled in South America. In 2021, the Darien Gap was breached, and Venezuelans started coming north as well. This has overwhelmed the entire region and is impacting cities like Chicago. We will first look at how the U.S. and its partners are addressing the root causes of migration from Venezuela, including U.S. sanctions policies, the Barbados Accords and other efforts to encourage free and fair elections in the country. We will also look at the humanitarian response outside of Venezuela, drawing from my personal experiences on the ground with the UN in 2017-2019, and more recently as U.S. diplomat, grappling with the challenge around tables with foreign leaders.
Special Guest: Génesis Dávila, IOP Pritzker Fellow, Human Rights Lawyer & Founder and President of Defiende Venezuela
Last September, the Panamanian government flew me and a few other senior U.S. officials to a remote indigenous community inside the Darien Gap. There we witnessed a wave of men, women and young children, walking through the most dangerous corridor in the world. They were tired, hungry; many were barefoot and injured. It was heart-wrenching to see. We learned that many of these migrants had given their life savings to smugglers for safe passage. The harsh reality is that criminal groups and local opportunists are collectively making billions on human desperation. In fact, in the last couple of years, we have seen some of the largest Latin American cartels involved in the drug trade shift their business model because moving people is even more lucrative. This has created an enormous challenge for the U.S. governments, and it was a central topic when I would meet with them in the region and in Washington.
During this session, we will take a close look at the amazing innovations that the Biden Administration generated in recent years to more efficiently process migrants and refugees and compete with the smugglers. It started with Ukraine. Shortly after Russia’s invasion, President Biden announced that the U.S. would welcome 100,000 Ukrainians - a gesture of solidarity with Europe. I was part of the small team at the White House charged with making it happen, and fast. We used this opportunity to deploy a new technology that DHS had been testing. It allowed refugees to apply for humanitarian parole on their smart phone app (instead of going to a U.S. consulate). DHS was able to swiftly process and approve cases, and Ukrainians were safely on planes to the U.S. within weeks. The success of the Uniting for Ukraine program gave us confidence to test this model with Venezuelans, and then Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans. In 2023, Spain, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala and the UN joined us in leveraging smart technology to open even more legal pathways through the Safe Mobility Offices Initiative. It's an exciting time in this respect and we’re just getting started.