Lee Gelernt and his team have been preparing for nearly a year for President-elect Donald Trump’s return to the White House.
As one of the American Civil Liberties Union’s top immigration lawyers, Gelernt is set to lead the charge against Trump policies his group views as violations of federal law, human rights, and due process.
“We will be prepared on Day One to analyze any executive orders and go to court on those that we feel need immediate action,” he said in an interview with Bloomberg Government.
The ACLU and immigrants’ rights organizations, along with Democratic state officials, are bracing for quick impact when Trump takes office Monday, as the president-elect has pledged to target several immigration measures on his first day.
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Gelernt’s team, recognizing that a Trump return was possible, started preparing last February by working up cases on various proposals Trump floated on the campaign trail.
Executive orders and proclamations in Trump’s initial days are likely to restore restrictions he had in place during his first term, scrap legal immigration pathways President Joe Biden established, and launch mass deportations of immigrants in the country illegally.
More Prepared
The ACLU, which sues Republican and Democratic administrations alike, was a leader in challenging immigration policies during Trump’s first term. Big cases focused on border wall construction, family separations, and the travel ban targeting several Muslim-majority countries.
Their efforts helped end family separations and blocked Trump’s first attempt at a broad asylum ban. But Gelernt and other lawyers acknowledge that Trump’s team will be more prepared and more detail-oriented this term.
“When they came in the first time around, they had not thought through all the legal angles and were trying to do things very fast,” he said. “They’ve now had four years to think.”
Gelernt has been offering words of advice to his colleagues who weren’t around for Trump’s first term in office.
“Whenever I’m feeling like I’m tired and don’t want to continue with a case or it looks futile, I always just have to think about the clients, the families who are struggling for their lives,” he said.
Litigants to Watch
An army of immigrants’ rights advocates will be joining the fight in federal court in the coming years. Groups to watch include the National Immigration Law Center, Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, the National Immigrant Justice Center, RAICES, Human Rights First, HIAS, and others.
Democratic attorneys general are also poised to serve as heavyweights in legal challenges to Trump’s border and immigration policies, just as Republican AGs have led the charge during the Biden administration.
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California Attorney General
“What we’ve been looking at and preparing for months is the things he said he will do when he takes office,” Bonta said this week at a Sacramento Press Club event.
Other blue states that led litigation against Trump’s immigration policies during his first term and are likely to do so again include New York, Washington, Massachusetts, and Hawaii.
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