Ahilan Arulanantham, 2016 MacArthur Fellow. Photo by John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
Twenty-three people have been selected as 2016 fellows of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and there’s good news for all of you aspiring geniuses out there — one of them is an attorney.
Meet Ahilan Arulanantham. No, getting this prestigious award isn’t the result of slaving away in Biglaw; Arulanantham is a lawyer for the ACLU of Southern California, where he works as the Director of Advocacy and Legal Director on important immigration issues.
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He may have chosen a path outside of Biglaw, but he still has a prestigious pedigree, including a J.D. from Yale Law School and time as a Ninth Circuit clerk. And his work in the field of immigration has yielded important victories:
Through advocacy and successful litigation of a series of landmark cases, Arulanantham has expanded immigrant detainees’ access to legal representation and limited the government’s power to detain them indefinitely. Courts have traditionally characterized deportation proceedings as civil cases, which means defendants do not have many of the rights guaranteed to criminal defendants, including the right to counsel and the right to ask for release on bond. As a result, immigrants going through deportation hearings often have to represent themselves in complex proceedings, during which they can be detained for months or even years.
Arulanantham’s current work focuses on representing the most vulnerable in the screwed-up immigration system — children:
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Arulanantham is currently advocating for extending the right to counsel to another vulnerable population—children placed in deportation proceedings—in J.E.F.M. v Lynch. Through his incremental approach and careful selection of cases, Arulanantham works to demonstrate the human costs of denying due process to immigrants and to set vital precedents to expand the rights of non-citizens.
Oh, and he tweets about it as well (under a cute username):
It doesn't take a genius to figure out that if you want a child to get a fair hearing in immigration court, they need a lawyer. #MacFellow
— Ahilan Arulanantham (@ahilan_toolong) September 22, 2016
More JEFM: govt says 10 yo girl doesn't deserve court-app'd lawyer bc she has not "undertaken a good faith effort to secure" her own.
— Ahilan Arulanantham (@ahilan_toolong) August 28, 2016
There is NO other legal system where it's kids vs gov't lawyers. @ACLU_SoCal @fernandaNYT #fairdayincourt #not1more https://t.co/0HOoetJ40F
— Ahilan Arulanantham (@ahilan_toolong) August 21, 2016
Congratulations on the award, and best of luck trying to undo the injustices in the immigration system.
Meet the 2016 MacArthur Fellows [MacArthur Foundation]
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Kathryn Rubino is an editor at Above the Law. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).