Prof. Jayashri Srikantiah (Director, SLS Immigrants’ Rights Clinic) in conversation with Eva Bitran and Luis Nolasco (ACLU of Southern CA) and Chris Wells (IL Attorney General’s Office), with introduction from SLS Prof. Jennifer Chacon (Bruce Tyson Mitchell Professor of Law).

Please join us for a discussion of the ways in which communities are challenging unlawful ICE practices and arrests, including through litigation and community organizing.

Chris Wells is Chief of the Public Interest Division in the Illinois Attorney General’s Office. He is currently lead counsel in Illinois v. Trump, litigation challenging the Trump Administration’s attempt to deploy National Guard troops in Chicago. Chris has also successfully litigated against efforts to withhold federal funding because of Illinois laws limiting state and local police participation in federal civil immigration enforcement. Chris is proud to work alongside a courageous group of attorneys in the Public Interest Division who have helped bring 51 lawsuits in the last year pushing back on unlawful federal actions. Prior to joining the Illinois Attorney General’s Office, Chris worked at Jenner & Block in Chicago and served as a law clerk to Judge Marvin E. Aspen of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. Chris holds a J.D. from Stanford Law School and a B.A. in History from Yale University.

Eva Bitran is the Director of Immigrants’ Rights and a Senior Staff Attorney at the ACLU of Southern California, where she has worked since 2017. In her current role, Eva leads a team of litigators, policy counsels, advocates and organizers in using the tools of integrated advocacy to advance immigrants’ rights. She has brought and overseen landmark class actions about immigration (like Hernandez Roman v. Wolf, which depopulated the Adelanto detention center during COVID, Vasquez Perdomo v. Noem, targeting suspicionless ICE and CBP stops based on race in the LA region, and UFW v. Noem, challenging CBP’s unconstitutional racial profiling of day laborers in the Central Valley), and organized advocacy campaigns (for example, to keep ICE and CBP off Greyhound buses, and in support of state and local sanctuary policies). Prior to joining the ACLU, Eva worked as a trial attorney in the federal Department of Justice, as a fellow with the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, and as a law clerk on the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

Luis Nolasco is a senior community engagement and policy advocate at the ACLU of Southern California, working from the Inland Empire office. He graduated with a B.A. in psychology from California State University, San Bernardino and was one of the co-founders of the Inland Empire Immigrant Youth Collective. He currently sits on the board of the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice (ICIJ). His work is focused on the intersections between the criminal justice system and immigration systems. Since 2012, he has been active in the fight to dismantle the collaboration between local law enforcement and immigration authorities, and the fight against mass incarceration in the Inland Valleys. Luis was a leading force in the effort to eliminate 287-G agreements locally and played a key role in organizing the statewide campaign for SB54, the California Values Act.