The Trump administration came in promising mass deportation. What has followed goes well beyond border control to matters of local policing, detention, federal power, and the limits of the law inside the United States. On this episode of Stanford Legal, co-host Professor Richard Thompson Ford talks with immigration expert Jennifer Chacón, the Bruce Tyson Mitchell Professor of Law, about the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement agenda and the profound consequences it is having in cities and communities across the country. They discuss racial profiling, ignored court orders, pressure on states and localities, and the widening reach of immigration enforcement into everyday civic life. Professor Chacón, author of a casebook on immigration law, elaborates on some of the themes in her recently published paper “The Law of the Immigration Raid.”

Links:

Jennifer Chacón >>> Stanford Law page
Legal Phantoms >>> Stanford Law page
Immigration Law and Social Justice >>> Stanford Law page

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Episode Transcripts >>> Stanford Legal Podcast Website
Stanford Legal Podcast >>> LinkedIn Page
Rich Ford >>> Twitter/X
Pam Karlan >>> Stanford Law School Page
Diego Zambrano >>> Stanford Law School Page
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Stanford Lawyer Magazine >>> Twitter/X

(00:00:00) Immigration Enforcement in 2026
(00:03:47) The Economics of a Closed Border
(00:09:58) Closing the Border to Asylum
(00:10:44) Profiling in Immigration Enforcement
(00:16:48) Courts, Defiance, and Detention
(00:25:40) Sanctuary, Commandeering, and the Weaponization of Immigration
(00:32:26) How States Can Restore the Humane Dimensions of Immigration Law

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