Irma Jean Carillo was 15 and a sophomore in high school in rural West Texas when she started thinking about becoming a lawyer.
“I refused to take home economics. I took speech and debate instead,” she told the Dallas Bar Association in a video interview in 2022. “The idea of extemporaneously speaking and debating and getting to argue with the teacher was so much fun. Doing the research and making sure that we prepared the arguments. It was so much fun.”
Four decades later, Irma Carillo Ramirez is a U.S. magistrate in Dallas and likely to soon be the first Hispanic woman to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
President Joe Biden announced Friday that Judge Ramirez is his selection to fill the spot vacated by Gregg Costa, who retired as a federal appeals court judge last year.
Judge Ramirez’s chances of being quickly confirmed by the U.S. Senate were boosted late Friday when the two U.S. senators from Texas, both Republicans, announced their support.
“Judge Ramirez’s distinguished track record of judicial excellence throughout her decades of service in Texas makes her exceptionally qualified for the Fifth Circuit,” said Sen. John Cornyn. “I am proud to recommend her for this position with Senator Cruz, and I look forward to seeing her continue to uphold the rule of law on the federal bench.”
Both senators pointed to the extensive review process conducted by the bipartisan Federal Judicial Evaluation Committee, which the senators appointed.
“Judge Ramirez has a remarkable personal story. She is impressively humble, and she is a tremendous mentor to many young lawyers,” said Winston & Strawn partner Matt Orwig, who served on the FJEC panel that recommended Judge Ramirez.
“She is devoted to following the law,” Orwig said. “She has no political agenda.”
Ramirez was born in Brownfield, Texas – not Brownsville, as The Texas Lawbook and other media outlets initially reported Friday – but grew up in neighboring Plains, which had a population of 1,100. Her parents were Mexican immigrants who came to the U.S. for work.
“My dad always said to me, ‘Study hard so you don’t have to work in the fields like I do.’ Education was very important to him,” Judge Ramirez said in the Dallas Bar Association video interview.
She went to West Texas A&M University in Canyon, which is close to Amarillo.
“That was as far as my mother was willing to let me go,” she said. “You didn’t leave the house unless you were getting married.”
Ramirez had no lawyers in her family or even among her friends’ families. But at the end of her first year of college, the part-time county attorney asked if she wanted to work that summer doing clerical work for his office.
“I jumped at it,” Ramirez said. “He was working on a murder case. A woman’s boyfriend had beaten her toddler son to death. The description of what happened and the pictures made me realize that I wanted to help people and put away bad guys who hurt little kids.”
Ramirez received the Sarah T. Hughes Scholarship, which allowed her to go to Southern Methodist University’s Dedman School of Law, where she graduated in 1991.
Moving to Dallas and attending SMU Law was “a culture shock.”
“A professor my first year gave us a hypothetical about a couple driving away in a Beemer,” she said. “I didn’t know what that was, and I had to ask one of my classmates what the professor was talking about. It was all so new.”
Locke Purnell Rain Harrell – now Locke Lord – hired Ramirez as an associate in litigation, where she worked for four years. In 1995, she was hired as a prosecutor in the U.S. attorney’s office for the Northern District of Texas.
“I wanted to be in the courtroom,” she said. “Going to the U.S. attorney’s office gave me the opportunity to be everything from the partner making the decision on the litigation to the copy clerk and making my own copies and typing out my own correspondence. It was the pure practice of law.”
Judge Ramirez said she was extremely proud of representing the people of the United States.
“I know this is only in my head; but the first time I appeared in federal court and said my name and said I represent the people of the United States, I swear the lights went up and there was a choir in the background,” she told the 2022 DBA video. “The power of the government rests on your shoulders. Your duty is to pursue justice. It was a white hat moment, especially for the daughter of an immigrant and farmer workers who had no formal education.”
In 2002, the Northern District made Judge Ramirez a magistrate judge.
In the video interview, Judge Ramirez said one surprise she has felt as a judge is “the weight of the decisions” she has had to make.
“It is very hard to watch the family’s reactions to the decisions I have to make,” she said. “The moms and dads and wives and the children and the hurt and pain – it is not just about the one person. It is about the whole family.”
“One of the great things I get to do in my current job is preside over naturalization ceremonies,” she said. “It is so beautiful to see people’s reaction when I tell them that they are being sworn in by the daughter of an immigrant and that someday their children might be sitting in my chair doing the same thing.”