Ahilan Arulanantham is an American human rights lawyer. He specializes in immigrants' rights, particularly the rights of people facing deportation from the United States. He has been Senior Counsel and Director of Advocacy/Legal Director for the

American Civil Liberties Union The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1920 "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States". T ...

of Southern California, and has also been a lecturer at the University of Chicago and University of California, Irvine law schools. Arulanantham is the recipient of a 2016

MacArthur Fellow The MacArthur Fellows Program, also known as the MacArthur Fellowship and commonly but unofficially known as the "Genius Grant", is a prize awarded annually by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation typically to between 20 and 30 indi ...

(a "Genius Grant").

Life and career

Arulanantham is the child of Sri Lankan Tamil immigrants. He grew up in

Lancaster, California Lancaster is a charter city in northern Los Angeles County, in the Antelope Valley of the western Mojave Desert in Southern California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 173,516, making Lancaster the 153rd largest city in the United ...

. Like many other members of the Sri Lankan Tamil community, most of Arulanantham's extended family fled Sri Lanka in the 1980s to escape

war War is an intense armed conflict between states, governments, societies, or paramilitary groups such as mercenaries, insurgents, and militias. It is generally characterized by extreme violence, destruction, and mortality, using regular o ...

. Many of them came to live with his family in

Southern California Southern California (commonly shortened to SoCal) is a geographic and cultural region that generally comprises the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. It includes the Los Angeles metropolitan area, the second most populous urban a ...

. Arulanantham attended

Georgetown University Georgetown University is a private university, private research university in the Georgetown (Washington, D.C.), Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded by Bishop John Carroll (archbishop of Baltimore), John Carroll in 1789 as Georg ...

, where he completed a B.A. degree in 1994. In 1996, he graduated from Lincoln College, Oxford with a B.A. degree. He then attended

Yale Law School Yale Law School (Yale Law or YLS) is the law school of Yale University, a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. It was established in 1824 and has been ranked as the best law school in the United States by '' U.S. News & Worl ...

, where he obtained a J.D. in 1999. He was a Marshall Scholar. Arulnantham worked as a law clerk on the

United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (in case citations, 9th Cir.) is the U.S. federal court of appeals that has appellate jurisdiction over the U.S. district courts in the following federal judicial districts: * District ...

for

Stephen Reinhardt Stephen Roy Reinhardt (born Stephen Roy Shapiro; March 27, 1931 – March 29, 2018) was a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, with chambers in Los Angeles, California. He was the last federal ...

. He was also an Equal Justice Works Fellow at the American Civil Liberties Union Immigrants' Rights Project in New York. Then, he spent two years as an Assistant Federal Public Defender in

El Paso, Texas El Paso (; "the pass") is a city in and the county seat, seat of El Paso County, Texas, El Paso County in the western corner of the U.S. state of Texas. The 2020 population of the city from the United States Census Bureau, U.S. Census Bureau w ...

, before joining the American Civil Liberties Union in

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, largest city in the U.S. state, state of California and the List of United States cities by population, sec ...

. As an attorney for the ACLU of Southern California, Arulanantham has been involved in several landmark cases that established rights for individuals facing deportation. In 2006, he was part of a group of attorneys that successfully challenged the United States government's practice of indefinite detentions in the case ''Nadarajah v Gonzales''. Arulanantham was also involved in the class action suit ''Rodriguez v Robbins'' in 2013, in which the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit established that immigrants in pending removal proceedings who had been detained for at least six months had a right to ask for a hearing where they could argue to be released on

bond Bond or bonds may refer to: Common meanings * Bond (finance), a type of debt security * Bail bond, a commercial third-party guarantor of surety bonds in the United States * Chemical bond, the attraction of atoms, ions or molecules to form chemica ...

, which enabled hundreds of immigrants to seek to be released to the company of their families rather than being held in detention while they waited for their cases to be heard. This case was subsequently adjudicated by the United States Supreme Court in '' Jennings v. Rodriguez'', and during that process Arulanantham argued the case twice before the Supreme Court. Arulanantham also led a group of attorneys in the case ''Franco-Gonzalez v Holder'', which established the right of immigrants with mental disabilities to appointed counsel. As an immigrants' rights specialist working as the Southern California legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union during the

Presidency of Donald Trump Donald Trump's tenure as the 45th president of the United States began with his inauguration on January 20, 2017, and ended on January 20, 2021. Trump, a Republican from New York City, took office following his Electoral College victory ...

, Arulanantham became substantially involved in litigation regarding the

immigration policy of Donald Trump Immigration policy, including illegal immigration to the United States, was a signature issue of former U.S. president Donald Trump's presidential campaign, and his proposed reforms and remarks about this issue generated much publicity. Trump h ...

. ''

'' magazine described him as being "on the front line for civil rights in the Trump era", for example for his work in ''Ramos v. Nielsen'' against attempts to end

temporary protected status Temporary Protected Status (TPS) is a temporary status given by the United States government to eligible nationals of designated countries, as determined by the Secretary of Homeland Security, who are present in the United States. In general, the ...

. In addition to his work as a practicing lawyer, Arulanantham has also taught in law schools. He has been a lecturer at both the

University of Chicago Law School The University of Chicago Law School is the law school of the University of Chicago, a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. It is consistently ranked among the best and most prestigious law schools in the world, and has many dis ...

and at the

University of California, Irvine School of Law The University of California, Irvine School of Law is the law school at the University of California, Irvine. It is the fifth law school in the UC system. In September 2007, Erwin Chemerinsky was named as the law school's first dean. Chemerinsky ...

Selected awards

In 2010, the

American Immigration Lawyers Association The American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), founded on October 14, 1946, is a voluntary bar association of over 15,000 attorneys and law professors who practice and teach immigration law. AILA member attorneys represent U.S. families se ...

gave Arulanantham the Arthur C. Helton Human Rights Award. In 2014, he and the rest of the litigation team in ''Franco-Gonzalez v Holder'' were given the Jack Wasserman Memorial Award, also by the American Immigration Lawyers Association. He has also been repeatedly listed by '' The Daily Journal'' among the "top 100 lawyers in California". Arulanantham was named a 2016 MacArthur Fellow, for "leading advocacy and legal efforts to secure the right to due process for immigrants facing deportation and working to set new precedents for the constitutional rights of noncitizens."

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Arulanantham, Ahilan Living people American legal scholars MacArthur Fellows American Civil Liberties Union people American people of Sri Lankan Tamil descent Georgetown University alumni Alumni of Lincoln College, Oxford Yale Law School alumni University of Chicago Law School faculty University of California, Irvine faculty Year of birth missing (living people) Marshall Scholars