Meet Kris Kobach, Law Prof Fighting for Local Role in Immigration Enforcement

University of Missouri-Kansas City law professor Kris Kobach is supporting tougher measures to fight illegal immigration in several court cases throughout the country.

Kobach “is on a dogged campaign to fight illegal immigration at the local level, riding an insurgency by cities and states fed up with what they see as federal failures on immigration,” the New York Times reports.

Kobach, a graduate of Yale Law School, first took up the cause when he was working at the Justice Department during the Sept. 11 attacks, the story says. Kobach was surprised to learn that several of the hijackers had been stopped by traffic police, who did not know that the traffic scofflaws were in the United States illegally.

Kobach went on to spearhead a new program requiring temporary immigrants from 25 Muslim countries to register often with federal authorities, according to the story. From Kobach’s standpoint, the program was a success; it resulted in the deportation of more than 13,000 people who violated immigration laws. But opponents said it unfairly targeted Muslims.

Since leaving the Justice Department, Kobach lost a campaign for a congressional seat and became involved in these cases, the story says:

• A federal judge struck down a Hazleton, Pa., ordinance that was designed to punish landlords and employers who rent or give jobs to illegal immigrants. It was a loss for Kobach, who had defended the ordinance. But he won a ruling upholding a similar ordinance in Valley Park, Mo.

• Kobach lost a suit seeking to block a Kansas statute that allows illegal immigrants to pay in-state tuition at public colleges. But he won a similar case in California that is pending before the state supreme court.

• Kobach won a ruling upholding an Arizona statute that pulls the business licenses of employers who repeatedly hire illegal immigrants.

Kobach told the Times that the driving principle of the suits is to restore the rule of law. “You have members of Congress throwing up their hands and saying the system is broken,” he told the newspaper. “I really think that’s a cop-out. Different parts of the system are working fine. The question is, How do you actually enforce the law in a vast nation that has very different circumstances in different states?”