Center for Immigration Law and Policy Events
A hub for immigration scholarship and advocacy, engaging community organizations, practitioners, lawmakers and experts in the field.
The Center for Immigration Law and Policy offers innovative programming that touches on immigration scholarship, policy, and practice.
To stay up to date with plans for future events, join our mailing list.
Upcoming Events
Borders and Belonging Book Launch
Wednesday, February 26, 2025
Please join the Center for Immigration Law and Policy (CILP), students, alumni, and members of the immigrants’ rights community for an evening conversation to launch our Faculty Co-Director, Hiroshi Motomura’s book, Borders and Belonging: Toward a Fair Immigration Policy. Professor Motomura’s book—informed by his personal experience and more than 40 years teaching immigration law—offers a complex and fair-minded account of immigration, its root causes, and the varying responses to it. The conversation will include insights from a diverse panel of guests: Jean Guerrero, investigative journalist, columnist, and author; Nicholas Espiritu, Deputy Legal Director at the National Immigration Law Center (NILC); and Stephen Lee, Professor of Law at UC Irvine School of Law. We look forward to a rich discussion that will examine the issue’s complexity and resolve to move us closer to a more realistic and sustainable immigration policy. There will be an opportunity for attendees to eat, drink, and connect with Professor Motomura, the panelists, and each other prior to the start of the conversation and after. Books will be available for sale at the event.
Please RSVP by Wednesday, February 19 at bit.ly/borders_and_belonging.
Past Events
Event recordings, when available, are linked below.
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2024 Events
Where to From Here? Post-Election Reflections and the Road Ahead for Immigration Law and Policy
Wednesday, November 13, 2024
Please join the Center for Immigration Law and Policy (CILP), Law Students for Immigrant Justice (LSIJ), and Public Interest Law Program (PILP) for an in-person discussion about the potential impacts of the election results on immigrant and immigrants’ rights advocacy communities. The program will include time to debrief as well as a structured dialogue with CILP faculty and staff about their experiences engaging in immigrants’ rights advocacy in the wake of past elections. The event will take place in Room 1457. Lunch will be provided to those who RSVP by Thursday, November 7th at 12 PM.
Immigrant Justice Advocates Welcome Picnic
September 11, 2024
No video available.
Join the immigrants' rights lawyers and advocates from UCLA's Center for Immigration Law and Policy (CILP) and the members of Law Students for Immigrant Justice (LSIJ) on Wednesday, September 11th at 12:15 pm in the Sculpture Garden. This lunchtime conversation will include a discussion of the modern landscape of immigration law and policy making, working in immigration justice advocacy, and what immigrants’ rights work is happening at UCLA Law. The space is intended to build community for the new school year and start a dialogue where folks can learn and share with one another.
Chance to Come Home
May 10, 2024
Join the National Immigrant Justice Center, The Center for Immigration Law and Policy at UCLA School of Law, Arizona State University and Borderlands Studios for an unforgettable virtual & in-person town hall and film screening on Friday, May 10 as deported advocates and immigration leaders fight for a “Chance to Come Home.”
A View from the Border: Exploring Challenges & Solutions for Immigration Policy with Advocates on the Ground
March 13, 2024
Please join the Center for Immigration Law and Policy (CILP) at UCLA School of Law for a conversation about challenges at the border and real solutions grounded in welcoming new migration. This program will feature CILP Faculty Co-Director Hiroshi Motomura and Senior Staff Attorney Monika Y. Langarica in dialogue with California and Texas-based advocates at the forefront of this work, including Kate Clark from Jewish Family Service of San Diego, Pedro Rios from the American Friends Services Committee's U.S.-Mexico Program, and Astrid Dominguez from Good Neighbor Settlement House in Brownsville, Texas.
Putting Scholarship into Practice: Detained Immigration Courts, Race Discrimination Claims, and New Immigrant Youth
February 25, 2024
No video available.
Please join the Center for Immigration Law & Policy (CILP), students, alumni, and members of the immigrants’ rights community for Sunday brunch and a conversation that bridges the gap between cutting-edge immigration scholarship and practice. UCLA professors Ahilan Arulanantham, Ingrid Eagly, and Nina Rabin will discuss their forthcoming articles: Reversing Racist Precedent (Arulanantham); Detained Immigration Courts (Eagly and Shafer); and Second Wave DREAMers (Rabin). The conversation, moderated by Hiroshi Motomura, will examine three timely topics: the argument that courts should disregard the precedential force of case decisions that were motivated by racial animus, the emergence of a segregated system of detained immigration courts, and the distinct challenges faced by contemporary child migrants. We look forward to a rich discussion of how this new scholarship can contribute to an understanding of today's immigration landscape and the advocacy tools needed to navigate it. There will be opportunity for attendees to eat and connect with the authors and each other prior to the start of the conversation and after.
UCLA School of Law is a State Bar of California approved MCLE provider. This session is approved for 1 hour of MCLE Credit.
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2023 Events
Film Screening of Sansón & Me
November 9, 2023
No video available.
As a Spanish interpreter, filmmaker Rodrigo Reyes met a young man named Sansón, an undocumented Mexican immigrant who was sentenced to life in prison without parole. Sansón and Reyes worked together over a decade, using hundreds of letters as inspiration for recreations of Sansón’s childhood—featuring members of Sansón’s own family. The result is a vibrant portrait of a friendship navigating immigration and the depths of the criminal legal system.
Opportunity for All: Where We Are & What's Next
October 30, 2023
Undocumented student organizers, legal scholars, & labor leaders will discuss lessons learned and next steps in the campaign to allow all students, regardless of immigration status, to work at the University of California.
Immigrants' Rights Advocates Welcome Picnic
September 11, 2023
No video available.
Come meet the immigrants' rights lawyers and advocates from UCLA's Center for Immigration Law and Policy (CILP) on Monday, Sep. 11 at 12:15 pm in a lunchtime conversation about working in immigration justice advocacy, navigating a career in public interest law, and the challenges and opportunities presented by working in an academic environment. Moderated and co-hosted by the Law Students for Immigrant Justice (LSIJ).
Reproductive Rights at the Margins: Injustice in Immigrant Confinement
April 5, 2023
On Wednesday, April 5, from 12:15-1:30pm PT, Tina Vasquez, editor-at-large at Prism, will interview Monika Langarica, Staff Attorney for the Center for Immigration Law and Policy (CILP) to discuss “Reproductive Rights at the Margins: Injustice in Immigrant Confinement.” They will primarily discuss reproductive rights in ICE and CBP custody, with a focus on a campaign that Monika has worked on for years to end or limit CBP’s detention of people who are pregnant, postpartum, and/or nursing, which is critical to upholding the reproductive rights of people at the border.
The event, hosted by the Center for Immigration Law and Policy (CILP) at UCLA Law and the UCLA Law Center on Reproductive Health, Law, and Policy, is part of the Visions and Voices of Reproductive Justice series.
Student/Alumni Breakfast Mixer
March 12, 2023
No video available.
Please join the Center for Immigration Law and Policy (CILP) and Law Students for Immigrant Justice (LSIJ) to meet and connect with UCLA students and alumni working in the immigration field. This gathering will take place in Glickman Courtyard (located to the right of the main Law School entrance) from 10 am to 11 am on Sunday, March 12th-- just prior to PILP's UServe event. We’ll have coffee and breakfast treats on hand. Families welcome.
Looking Back and Looking Forward: Fifteen Years of Advancing Immigration Representation
March 9, 2023
Hosted by Fordham Law School.
Since 2008, the Katzmann Immigration Study Group has envisioned and put into practice innovative solutions to the immigration representation crisis. Led until his passing by the Hon. Robert A. Katzmann, former Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, the Study Group has launched initiatives including the Immigrant Justice Corps, the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project, and public-private partnerships.
This symposium, marking the Study Group's fifteenth year, will highlight projects undertaken to date, current trends, and pressing needs. Experts in the field will discuss the latest findings and research. A session will celebrate Chief Judge Katzmann's accomplishments in the legal representation of immigrants and the administration of justice.
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights 186th Regular Period of Sessions: Session on the Situation of Human Mobility from an Ethnic-Racial Approach
March 7, 2023
Hosted by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and Promise Institute for Human Rights at the UCLA School of Law
During the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights’ (IACHR) Period of Sessions in Los Angeles today, the Promise Institute for Human Rights and the Center for Immigration Law and Policy (CILP) at UCLA Law were joined by more than a dozen partner organizations working across the Americas to present at a thematic hearing on human mobility, structural racism in the region, and the need for an anti-racist approach.
It’s the first time an IACHR hearing focused on the intersection of race and migration. Impacted people from communities throughout the Americas testified directly to the Commission emphasizing the ways in which racism imperils migrants at every stage in their journey.
UCLA Law’s CILP and Promise Institute for Human Rights spearheaded this hearing in close collaboration with allies from throughout the Americas, including Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL), RacismoMX, Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI), Espacio Migrante, Haitian Bridge Alliance, Comunidades Indígenas en Liderazgo (CIELO), Asociación Pop No’j, and National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild (NIPLNG).
Building Power from Within: A Conversation with Detained and Deported Organizers
February 22, 2023
On Wednesday, February 22, at 12:15 pm Pacific, 3:15 pm Eastern, the UCLA Law Students for Immigrant Justice (LSIJ), Center for Immigration Law and Policy (CILP), and California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice (CCIJ) will host Building Power from Within. CCIJ’s Community Engagement Director, Edwin Carmona-Cruz, and systems-impacted panelists will explore the landscape of organizing from inside immigration detention facilities and after deportation. There is a wealth of organized resistance within immigration detention facilities but we often do not hear the perspectives of those fighting on the inside.
This panel will center the experiences of four people who have led labor and hunger strikes, advocated for the termination of the last contract between ICE and a California county, lobbied for the passage of legislation to end the transfer of people from prisons to ICE custody, and fought for greater protections in facilities during COVID-19. The panelists will explore the intersections between legal services and organizing, with a particular focus on how legal workers and outside advocates can bolster the efforts of those who are detained or deported.
Building Power from Within is especially timely given a rise in calls for the abolition of immigration detention facilities, prisons, and jails. This dialogue will feature immigrant leaders who have been incarcerated and detained as they discuss the challenges of fighting for “humane” detention conditions, while simultaneously advocating for liberation.
Visiting Scholars Lunch
February 3, 2023
No video available.
Please join the Center for Immigration Law and Policy (CILP) for lunch and informal conversation on Friday, February 3 with our current visiting scholar, Silvia Adamo, and our two incoming visiting scholars, Marta Gorzcynska and Niamh Keady-Tabbal. Silvia joins us from the University of Copenhagen, and is an expert in European immigration and integration law. Marta joins us from the University of Warsaw, and is a leading human rights lawyer and scholar specializing in EU law on asylum and migration. Niamh joins us from the Irish Centre for Human Rights, National University of Ireland, Galway, and is a researcher focusing on human rights, migration and refugee law, particularly in the Aegean. We’re thrilled to be able to host these scholars at UCLA. We look forward to introducing them to you, and to the meaningful conversations we know will follow.
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2022 Events
Illegal Entry and Reentry Laws: Their Racism, Their Impact and the Movement to End Them
November 2, 2022
One of the most prosecuted federal crimes today - 8 U.S.C. 1326 - was written by eugenicists in 1929.
Join CILP’s Gabriela Domenzain in conversation with a man behind bars, convicted of illegal reentry; the family he’s separated from; Professor Kelly Lytle Hernández, a UCLA historian who exposed the law’s racist history; Professor Ingrid Eagly, a UCLA law professor who studies their impact; and Kara Hartlzer, a federal public defender fighting to end them.
Simultaneous Spanish interpretation will be available during the webinar.
Meet & Greet Picnic for UCLA Law Immigrants' Rights Advocates
September 28, 2022
No video available.
Come meet the immigrants' rights lawyers and advocates from UCLA's Center for Immigration Law and Policy (CILP) in a lunchtime conversation about working in immigration justice advocacy, navigating a career in public interest law, and the challenges and opportunities presented by working in an academic environment. Moderated and co-hosted by the Law Students for Immigrant Justice (LSIJ), the event will include a free lunch for all of those who RSVP by noon on Friday, September 23rd.
Inside the U.S. Immigration System: USCIS Director Ur M. Jaddou in Conversation with Professor Ahilan Arulanantham
August 29, 2022
Please join UCLA Center for Immigration Law and Policy’s Ahilan Arulanantham for a conversation with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director Ur M. Jaddou, UCLA Law ‘01, on Monday, August 29, at 3:30 p.m. Pacific Time. This conversation will take place before a live audience and broadcast simultaneously via Zoom from UCLA’s Herb Alpert School of Music’s Lani Hall.
A component of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, USCIS administers lawful immigration to the United States and adjudicates benefits and services that include, but are not limited to, permanent residence, naturalization and U.S. citizenship, asylum and refugee status, Temporary Protected Status, deferred action (including DACA), and employment authorization.
Immigration 101
June 1, 2022
No video available.
Hosted by the ACLU of Southern California.
Laws and policies affecting immigration, citizenship, and immigrants’ rights have become important to many areas of public interest law, especially in Southern California but also throughout the United States, with so many noncitizen clients and constituencies. Hiroshi Motomura, Susan Westerberg Prager Distinguished Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy delivers a crash course in the basics of immigration and citizenship law.
Meet & Greet Picnic with CILP
April 27, 2022
No video available.
Join CILP & LSIJ for a meet & greet picnic lunch on Wednesday, April 27th to learn more about CILP staff members’ experiences in law school and their paths to public interest legal careers. This event will include Q&A and a discussion about how to stay grounded in the fight for immigrants’ rights, especially as we head into final exams.
Immigration Prison: Hard Questions About Abolition
April 22, 2022
The United States runs the largest immigration prison system in the world. This so-called “detention” system jails half a million people a year. Some are undocumented, others have green cards, and many have come here seeking asylum. For the most part, they have no right to an appointed lawyer, no right to ask a judge for release on bond, and often no right to a deportation hearing at all. And most jailed immigrants are held in for-profit prisons, despite the progress made in reducing private prisons in the criminal legal system. Recognizing these realities leads us to an uncomfortable truth: this country runs a very large system of imprisonment without trial—just for immigrants. What should be done about this? Can we both reduce the harm the system causes and at the same time work to end it?
On Friday, April 22, at 12:15 pm Pacific, 3:15 pm Eastern, Prof. Ahilan Arulanantham from the Center for Immigration Law and Policy will host a 90-minute webinar, Immigration Prison: Hard Questions About Abolition. You’ll hear directly from Alex Rodriguez, who spent more than three years in immigration prison, and leading advocates Silky Shah and Andrew Free, who have spent their entire careers organizing and litigating against this system. The panel will also feature an exclusive interview with a recently released immigrant who had been imprisoned since before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Together, they will explore hard questions facing the movement to abolish immigration prisons: Does advocating for bond hearings, counsel, or more humane conditions help or hurt the cause? Does the movement to end immigration prisons gain power, or lose it, by aligning itself with the broader movement for prison abolition? What do we make of the massive increase in the use of “alternatives to detention” under the Biden Administration? And what advice do these movement leaders have for students and other advocates?
From Brownsville to San Diego: A Conversation with CILP Attorneys About Living and Working on the Border
March 9, 2022
No video available.
What is it actually like to work on issues related to immigration law along our country’s southern border? Join the Center for Immigration Law and Policy (CILP) for this panel discussion featuring attorneys who have lived and worked all along the southern border, from Brownsville to San Diego. CILP Faculty Co-Director Hiroshi Motomura will moderate a conversation with CILP’s Deputy Director Talia Inlender, Staff Attorney Monika Y. Langarica, and Fellow Astghik Hairapetian ’20. They will discuss their experiences working to bring deported veterans home, challenging unlawful border policies including the “Remain in Mexico” program, and clerking for a federal district judge along the border.
Storytelling with Purpose: Media as Advocacy for Immigrant Defense
February 25, 2022
No video available.
UCLA Law's LSIJ and CILP invite you to hear from Lilian Calderon, the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit filed by the ACLU against the Trump administration's separation of married couples, on how news media, legislative advocacy and social media were used to free Lilian from detention, and bring awareness to the plight of immigrants in Rhode Island.
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2021 Events
The Road Ahead in Immigration Law: What Can the President Do?
October 20 and October 22, 2021
Session 1: Univision National Network’s Jorge Ramos in Conversation with Three DREAMers Who Fought the President and Won
Jorge Ramos, Univision National Network Anchor and one of the nation’s leading voices on immigration, will launch CILP’s conference with a live interview of three leaders of the immigrants’ rights movement: Erika Andiola, Chief Advocacy Officer of RAICES Texas, Cristina Jiménez Moreta, Co-Founder of United We Dream, and Lorella Praeli, Co-President of the Center for Community Change. As undocumented youth a decade ago, Erika, Cristina, and Lorella each played a crucial role in the advocacy that contributed to DACA, the most significant advance for the rights of undocumented immigrants in a generation. Erika, Cristina, and Lorella have particular insight into the present political moment because each of them was told time and time again that the President did not have the power to create what became DACA. Their persistent advocacy changed the course of history. Jorge will engage these three powerful advocates in a reflective, personal conversation about what they have learned from their time in the movement, and how they see the path forward.
Session 2: Hiroshi Motomura in Conversation with Leading Advocates on Efforts Toward Executive Action Today
How should advocates think about the legislative and executive landscape for administrative relief? We ask three people with profound insight into that question. The impact that Pablo Alvarado, the Co-Executive Director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), Guerline M. Jozef, President of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, and Karen Tumlin, Founder and Director of Justice Action Center, have had on immigrant communities is both undeniable and profound. NDLON’s organizing and litigation efforts were critical in building the National TPS Alliance as a powerful political force within the immigrants’ rights movement, effectively stopping the Trump Administration’s attempt to terminate the Temporary Protected Status of nearly half a million long-time lawful residents. Haitian Bridge Alliance has done extraordinary work to protect Haitian refugees, and most recently achieved what is thus far the only successful campaign under the Biden Administration to win large-scale administrative relief – reauthorized Temporary Protected Status – for any group of immigrants. Justice Action Center has played a crucial role in preserving DACA and crafting the response to the ever-shifting judicial, administrative, and legislative landscape surrounding it. CILP’s Faculty Co-Director Hiroshi Motomura will moderate.
Session 3: Ahilan Arulanantham in Conversation with Leading Scholars on the Scope and Limits of Executive Branch Authority Over Immigration
Regardless of what happens in Congress over the next few months, at least several million people who have lived here for years will find themselves at risk of deportation and without authorization to work when the new year comes. Can anyone in the executive branch do anything about that? To discuss, we bring together three of the most knowledgeable voices on presidential authority to shape immigration law and policy. Adam B. Cox, Robert A. Kindler Professor of Law at New York University School of Law, recently co-authored an exhaustive legal analysis of the President’s authority to craft immigration policy. Jennifer M. Chacón, Professor of Law at UC Berkeley School of Law, is an influential expert on immigration enforcement, with special expertise on the role of race in enforcement decisions. Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia, Clinical Professor of Law and Founder and Director of Penn State University’s Center for Immigrants’ Rights Clinic, is the nation’s leading authority on the nature of executive prosecutorial discretion authority in the immigration context. They will analyze the current moment for executive decision making and administrative relief, putting today’s controversies in historical context. CILP’s Faculty Co-Director Ahilan Arulanantham will moderate.
Arguing About Secret Surveillance at the Supreme Court: Professor Ahilan Arulanantham Discusses FBI v. Fazaga
October 13, 2021
No video available.
Join Professor Arulanantham in an event open only to students as he discusses FBI v. Fazaga, a case he will be arguing at the Supreme Court on November 8. Professor Arulanantham will describe the issues in the case, starting with the post-9/11 history of FBI surveillance on Americans who practice Islam, the story of the FBI informant who spied on people in Southern California and then publicly revealed his role, and the relationship between the state secrets privilege and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which is the central issue presented in the Supreme Court litigation. He will then talk about how he approaches argument preparation, his thoughts on arguing at the Court in the present political moment, and more.
Immigrant Families & Asylum: How Has President Biden Shifted the Policy Landscape?
August 26, 2021
The Center for Immigration Law and Policy (CILP) is hosting a conversation about the Biden Administration's policies toward families seeking asylum at the border. The conversation, hosted by CILP’s Gabriela Domenzain, will explore two strategies the Biden Administration has now started to employ: Expedited Removals and Expedited Dockets. The conversation will highlight what UCLA Law Professor Ingrid Eagly's research shows on these subjects, the first-hand experience of Suny Rodriguez, a Honduran mother who experienced both policies under the Obama Administration, and the on-the-ground defense work of Elora Mukherjee, the director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School, that resulted in Suny, and many other detained families, being released and then winning their asylum cases.
Searching for the North Star
July 2021
Hosted by the ACLU of Southern California.
From inside the jails holding Muslim immigrants after 9/11, to courtrooms filled with unrepresented children fleeing violence in Central America, to the Supreme Court arguments challenging the prolonged imprisonment of immigrants, Ahilan Arulanantham, UCLA Law’s Professor from Practice and Co-Director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy, tells stories from his work and offers a positive vision of justice for all.
Immigration 101
June 11, 2021
No video available.
Hosted by the ACLU of Southern California.
Laws and policies affecting immigration, citizenship, and immigrants’ rights have become important to many areas of public interest law, especially in Southern California but also throughout the United States, with so many noncitizen clients and constituencies. Hiroshi Motomura, Susan Westerberg Prager Distinguished Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy delivers a crash course in the basics of immigration and citizenship law.
Immigration Policy in the Biden Administration: The First 100 Days and Beyond
April 23, April 30, and May 7, 2021
During the 2020 presidential campaign, President Biden repeatedly signaled his interest in adopting an immigration policy very different from that of the prior administration. After winning the election, several leaders from the immigrants’ rights movement joined the new administration, suggesting that fundamental change was imminent. As we approach one hundred days into this new era, it has become clear that the Biden Administration will reset U.S. immigration policies. But reset to what?
This conference brought together important stakeholders to address three central questions: First, what should federal immigration policy look like, both in the Biden Administration and beyond? Second, have the first 100 days put the country on a path toward achieving those goals, or is the reality mixed? Third, what should immigrants’ rights advocates do to achieve the world they want, in terms of both substantive demands and tactics to achieve them?
Visit the conference page for more information.
