Ahilan Arulanantham facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Ahilan Arulanantham
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Arulanantham speaking at the Knight First Amendment Institute in 2024
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| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Lawyer |
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Ahilan Arulanantham is an American lawyer who works to protect human rights. He is especially known for helping immigrants, which are people who come to live in a new country. He focuses on their rights, especially when they might be asked to leave the United States. He has worked as a top lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in Southern California. He has also taught law at universities. In 2016, he received a special award called the MacArthur Fellowship, sometimes called a "Genius Grant," for his important work.
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Early Life and Education
Ahilan Arulanantham's parents were immigrants from Sri Lanka. They were part of the Tamil community. He grew up in Lancaster, California. In the 1980s, many of his relatives had to leave Sri Lanka because of a war. Many of them came to live with his family in Southern California.
Arulanantham went to Georgetown University and earned a bachelor's degree in 1994. He then studied at Lincoln College, Oxford in England, getting another bachelor's degree in 1996. After that, he attended Yale Law School, where he earned his law degree in 1999. He was also a special student called a Marshall Scholar.
Working as a Lawyer
After law school, Arulanantham worked for a judge named Stephen Reinhardt. This job is called a law clerk. He also worked as a fellow at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in New York, focusing on immigrants' rights. Later, he was a public defender in El Paso, Texas, helping people who could not afford a lawyer.
Then, he joined the American Civil Liberties Union in Los Angeles. As a lawyer for the ACLU of Southern California, Arulanantham worked on many important cases. These cases helped establish new rights for people facing deportation. Deportation means being officially sent out of a country.
Important Cases and Achievements
In 2006, Arulanantham was part of a team that won a case called Nadarajah v Gonzales. This case successfully challenged the government's practice of holding people in detention for a very long time without a clear reason.
He was also involved in a big case called Rodriguez v Robbins in 2013. In this case, a court decided that immigrants who had been held for at least six months while waiting for their cases had a right to ask for a hearing. At this hearing, they could argue to be released on bond. This meant hundreds of immigrants could try to go home to their families instead of staying in detention.
This case later went to the highest court in the United States, the Supreme Court, in a case called Jennings v. Rodriguez. Arulanantham argued this case twice before the Supreme Court.
Arulanantham also led a group of lawyers in the case Franco-Gonzalez v Holder. This case established that immigrants with mental disabilities have the right to have a lawyer appointed to help them.
Work During the Trump Presidency
During the time Donald Trump was president, Ahilan Arulanantham continued his work as the legal director for the ACLU in Southern California. He was very involved in legal challenges against the government's immigration policies.
Los Angeles magazine said he was "on the front line for civil rights in the Trump era." For example, he worked on the case Ramos v. Nielsen. This case fought against attempts to end temporary protected status, which allows people from certain countries to live and work in the U.S. temporarily if their home country is unsafe.
Teaching Law
Besides being a practicing lawyer, Arulanantham has also taught at law schools. He has been a lecturer at both the University of Chicago Law School and the University of California, Irvine School of Law.
Awards and Recognition
Ahilan Arulanantham has received several awards for his important work.
- In 2010, the American Immigration Lawyers Association gave him the Arthur C. Helton Human Rights Award.
- In 2014, he and his team for the Franco-Gonzalez v Holder case received the Jack Wasserman Memorial Award, also from the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
- He has also been listed many times by The Daily Journal as one of the "top 100 lawyers in California."
In 2016, Arulanantham was named a MacArthur Fellow. This award recognized him 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." "Due process" means that everyone has a right to fair treatment under the law.
