Catalina Rodriguez Lima

Baltimore City Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs (MIMA)

Catalina Rodriguez Lima serves as director of the Baltimore City Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs, a position from which she has coordinated citywide efforts on behalf of immigrant residents across Baltimore.

Rodriguez Lima’s most significant accomplishment came during the coronavirus pandemic, when she worked to ensure immigrant residents — regardless of language, status or access to technology — were included in emergency response and recovery. Recognizing that access to accurate information was a matter of life or death, she developed a process to translate thousands of emergency documents into the city’s five core languages and launched multilingual communication channels to share vital updates on public services and resources. As federal and local relief programs rolled out, she worked with agencies to ensure access to testing, vaccination, food and rental assistance.

To address the exclusion of undocumented families from federal CARES Act relief, she established the Emergency Relief for Immigrant Families Program, raising $2.5 million in public and private funds to assist 3,500 families. That effort became the foundation for the Baltimore Immigrant Community Fund — Maryland’s first public-private fund dedicated to immigrant families — which has raised an additional $1 million since 2025 to support families affected by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detentions. She also developed the “Prevention, Control, and Support” strategy to address COVID-19’s disproportionate impact on Latino communities through culturally competent outreach and bilingual contact tracers who connected residents to health and financial resources. That work evolved into the Baltimore New American Access Coalition, which has assisted nearly 1,000 families and remains one of the office’s signature programs.

Beyond her own office, Rodriguez Lima has mentored Baltimore County officials through the planning and implementation of their own immigrant affairs infrastructure, advising on office structure, staffing models, policy priorities and community engagement strategies. She has also shared best practices, reviewed proposed frameworks and coached staff on navigating legal, political and operational challenges. Her guidance has contributed to active county consideration of legislation to establish a permanent Office of Immigrant Affairs, and she testified before the County Council on January 27 in support of the proposal. She has provided similar counsel to advocates in Anne Arundel County pursuing comparable legislation.

This is an honoree profile from The Daily Record’s Top 100 Women awards. Information for this profile was sourced from the honoree’s application for the award. The honoree profiles were written using an artificial intelligence program and supported by honoree nominations, applications and letters of recommendation. Each profile was reviewed, fact-checked and edited for accuracy by The Daily Record’s editorial staff.