Gabriela Barahona

Gabriela Barahona is Texas Jail Project’s Director of Advocacy and Education. Gabriela is a first-generation Honduran American whose personal experience advocating for incarcerated siblings informs her daily pursuit of a future without pretrial detention – a world where healthy communities render jails obsolete. 

Gabriela joined Texas Jail Project in the Summer of 2020 and implemented Texas Jail Project’s first direct aid program, leading the disbursement of nearly a quarter million dollars in unrestricted cash grants to incarcerated people and their families. She produces TJP’s community testimony workshops and leads a number of active and past local campaigns, including the fight-to-end transfers of pretrial defendants from Harris county to private jails, and the Harris County Community Safety Budget. 

Outside of work, Gabriela is an organizer with the Houston Abolitionist Collective, and a former organizer with Stop TxDOT I-45, a grassroots group that organized resistance to a local freeway expansion threatening to displace thousands of families. After successfully halting the project, the group continues to organize against freeway expansions and fight for transit equity. 

In her free time, Gabriela enjoys vegan cooking, living a car-free life on her bike, and hanging out with her rescue dog Benny.