Immigration Archives - Public Seminar

Podcast

Immigration Detention

Season 2, Episode 5

March 27, 2026 • by T. Alexander Aleinikoff and Hiroshi Motomura

Guests Mekela A. Goehring (Executive Director, Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network) and Laura P. Lunn (Director of Advocacy & Litigation, Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network) join the Unsettled hosts in a conversation about immigration detention in the second Trump administration. The administration has been greatly expanding detention facilities by buying ...

Activism

Against Innocence

Unravelling the myth of the depoliticized child

March 4, 2026 • by Alexandra Magearu

1. In my early twenties, I was captivated by the idea that creative processes can return us to the boundless dreamscapes of our childhood. Only back then, I thought, could we afford to experience the world somatically. Not yet captured by social conventions, our bodies had the potential to become everything. ...

Podcast

Rights in the Era of ICE Raids

Season 2, Episode 4

February 26, 2026 • by T. Alexander Aleinikoff and Hiroshi Motomura

In this episode, guest Lee Gelernt, Deputy Director of ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, joins the Unsettled hosts in discussing immigration enforcement in the United States from the perspective of civil liberties, assessing the broader implications of contemporary enforcement practices for constitutional rights and the rule of law.

Podcast

“I’m an Immigration Lawyer. Trump Is Shattering My Clients’ Lives.”

Season 2: Episode 3

January 29, 2026 • by T. Alexander Aleinikoff and Hiroshi Motomura

Please note: This episode begins with a discussion of the events in Minneapolis, but was recorded prior to the January 24, 2026, shooting of Alex Pretti, in Minneapolis, MN.

“I’m an Immigration Lawyer. Trump Is Shattering My Clients’ Lives.”

Politics

The Moral Right to Defend Yourself Against ICE

If constitutional constraints are real limits on government power, their violation must sometimes justify the same defensive responses that other rights violations justify

January 22, 2026 • by Michael Gregory

If you saw an armed stranger in body armor forcing his way into your neighbor's home at dawn, dragging a screaming mother away from her children while pointing a rifle at the family, would you have the right to stop him? By any means necessary? Now the forbidden version: What if ...

The Moral Right to Defend Yourself Against ICE

North America

One Battle After Another

With ICE in Minneapolis: An eyewitness account

January 21, 2026 • by Emily Condon

On Tuesday morning, January 13, I was driving home after dropping my 9-year-old son off at school. There were ICE vehicles everywhere, I was surrounded by them on Park Ave. After a block or two of this, I parked and got out of my car. I saw that there were many ...

Podcast

H-1B Visas

Season 2: Episode 2

January 20, 2026 • by T. Alexander Aleinikoff, Hiroshi Motomura and Cristina M Rodríguez

David J. Bier, Director of Immigration Studies and the Selz Foundation Chair in Immigration Policy at the Cato Institute, joins Hiroshi Motomura and Cristina M. Rodriguez to discuss the implications of 2025 Executive Order on H-1B visas, what might be motivating that Executive Order, and the ins and outs of ...

Podcast

The Trump Administration’s War on Venezuelan Migrants

Season 2: Episode 1

October 24, 2025 • by T. Alexander Aleinikoff, Hiroshi Motomura and Cristina M Rodríguez

Jonathan Blitzer, staff writer for The New Yorker, discusses his recent article “Enemies of the State: How the Trump Administration declared war on Venezuelan migrants in the US.” In telling the story of a Venezuelan couple living in Chicago, one of whom was sent to CECOT, the notorious prison in El Salvador, and one ...

The Trump Administration’s War on Venezuelan Migrants

History

Looking Back: The Indochina Migration and Refugee Act

The success of an immigration or refugee resettlement can never be fully evaluated in the first decades

September 16, 2025 • by Catherine Simpson Bueker

Catherine Simpson Bueker explores the legacy of the Indochina Migration and Refugee Act and how Vietnamese refugees in America reshaped US society....

Looking Back: The Indochina Migration and Refugee Act

Podcast

The Democrats and Immigration

Episode 10

July 30, 2025 • by T. Alexander Aleinikoff, Hiroshi Motomura and Cristina M Rodríguez

However, the Trump administration has overreached. Even among Republicans, the change in sentiment is noteworthy. Can the Democrats can come up with a narrative and a set of policies that can appeal to a wide swath of the American public. But what should those policies be? And can the Democrats shed ...

Podcast

A Quiet Border and the End of Asylum?

Episode 9

July 21, 2025 • by T. Alexander Aleinikoff, Hiroshi Motomura and Cristina M Rodríguez

Our guest speakers are Lee Gelernt, Deputy Director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project, and Gretchen Kuhner, Director El Instituto para las Mujeres en la Migración, a Mexican NGO that seeks to protect the rights of migrant women and families.

Podcast

What’s Happening in Los Angeles?

Episode 8

June 24, 2025 • by T. Alexander Aleinikoff, Hiroshi Motomura and Cristina M Rodríguez

Our guest speakers are from UCLA School of Law’s Center for Immigration Law and Policy: Ahilan Arulanantham, professor from practice and faculty co-director, and Talia Inlander, the Center’s deputy director.