Ahilan Arulanantham

Attorney Ahilan Arulanantham is on the frontline of many of today’s immigration battles, arguing in court for the right to due process for detained immigrants, refugee children, and others who have been subjected to the federal immigration enforcement system. During his tenure at ACLU SoCal, he has successfully litigated several landmark cases, including Nadarajah v. Gonzales, the first Ninth Circuit case establishing limits on the government’s power to detain immigrants as national security threats; Rodriguez v. Robbins, which required the government to provide bond hearings to thousands of immigration detainees; and Franco v. Holder, the first case to establish a right to appointed legal representation for any group of immigrants facing deportation, which required the federal government to provide legal representation to mentally ill immigrants. He is a 2016 MacArthur Fellow.

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