Lecturer in Law Lucas Guttentag is quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle in a story about cracking down on suspected illegal immigrants in the workplace before President Bush leaves office:

The Bush administration is urging a federal judge in San Francisco to let it implement a crackdown on suspected illegal immigrants in the workplace before President Bush leaves office.

In papers filed this week in U.S. District Court, the Department of Homeland Security argued for an accelerated schedule that could allow a regulation known as the no-match rule to take effect by mid-January.

The rule, which the department first proposed in August 2007, would threaten businesses with prosecution unless they fired employees whose Social Security numbers differed from their listings in the Social Security database.

…

Obama has shown reluctance on at least one occasion to require the use of government databases to check workers’ identities, Avendano said. While the Senate was debating an immigration bill that eventually died, she said, the Illinois Democrat proposed an amendment to limit compulsory use of E-Verify, an online program in which employers can check government records to see whether someone is legally authorized to work.

Lucas Guttentag of the American Civil Liberties Union, a lawyer in the case, said, “It makes more sense to allow the incoming administration to decide how it wants to proceed and have adequate time to assess a regulation universally opposed by civil rights groups, labor groups and business groups.”