Immigration Article of the Day: Abusing Discretion: An Interview with Professor Lucas Guttentag on the Trump Administration's Initial Wave of Immigration Policies
Abstract
Lucas Guttentag is one of the nation’s leading experts on immigration law and the rights of non-citizens. He founded the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project (IRP) in 1985 and led it for 25 years, building it into the country’s premier immigration litigation program, litigating major cases nationwide, including national class actions, and successfully arguing to establish landmark principles in the Supreme Court. He later served in senior policy positions in both the Obama and Biden administrations. In 2017, he launched the Immigration Policy Tracking Project (immpolicytracking.org), which compiles and archives every immigration policy and document of the Trump administrations. He is a graduate of UC Berkeley and Harvard Law School.
This interview, edited for clarity and readability, was conducted by Renee Hernandez Rodriguez and Alice Choi, editors on the Berkeley Journal of Criminal Law, on May 22, 2025. The editing process continued through September 1, 2025, and citations are updated through that date. The interview covers a range of issues, including a framework for understanding the vast array of initial Trump immigration policies in buckets of issues, the author's Immigration Policy Tracking Project, the administration's abuse of discretion, and the threat to the rule of law.
