Most legal efforts to stop anti-immigrant policies adopted by the Trump Administration have, at most, slowed their implementation, and have just as often failed entirely. According to polls, public opinion seems to have rejected the Trump approach to immigration, and yet the political process seems unable to change it. This lecture by a scholar and advocate at the frontlines addresses these apparent failures, and in the process identifies gaps in international law, administrative law and constitutional norms that have left immigrants uniquely exposed to harm at a time of rising nationalism and xenophobia.

Michael Kagan (J.D. Michigan 2000), is Joyce Mack Professor of Law at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where he is Director of the UNLV Immigration Clinic. As a scholar, Prof. Kagan has written extensively about the intersection of immigration law with civil liberties and administrative law, and is the author of some of the most widely cited articles in international refugee law. As a legal advocate, Prof. Kagan started his career developing legal aid for Sudanese, Somali, Iraqi and other refugees in the Middle East. He now directs a clinic that defends people facing deportation in Las Vegas, Nevada. In a private capacity, Prof. Kagan was a plaintiff in Kravitz v. Department of Commerce, one of the lawsuits that ultimately prevented a citizenship question from being added to the 2020 United States Census.

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