A coalition of leading civil rights scholars, legal advocates, and nonprofit organizations filed an amicus curiae brief on August 12, 2025 with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in support of a constitutional challenge to Arkansas’s alien land laws—Act 636 and Act 174. These laws, which restrict land ownership by so-called “foreign parties” or “foreign-party businesses,” have been criticized for discriminating on the basis of race and national origin and conflicting with federal immigration law. Read full statement here.

News reports of noncitizens unexpectedly being detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, have dominated headlines in recent weeks. Those being detained include noncitizens who hold lawful permanent residency status. One story concerns the March 8, 2025, arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a lawful permanent resident and recent Columbia University graduate, who was initially detained in New Jersey and transported to Louisiana. He remains there while he challenges his detention and the immigration judge’s April 11 decision that he can be deported And on March 25, ICE agents arrested Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish national and doctoral student at Tufts University, while she was walking […]

      Students should submit their resume, list of references, and a brief writing sample as one pdf document to Jason Hernandez at Jason.c.hernandez@rutgers.edu by May 5, 2023. Finalists will be interviewed the week of May 15, 2023, and we anticipate making final selection by May 22, 2023.