Michael Kagan
Professor of Law
Director, UNLV Immigration Clinic
Expertise: Immigration Law, International Human Rights Law, Administrative Law
Biography
Michael Kagan, director of the UNLV Immigration Clinic, teaches administrative law, professional responsibility, international human rights and immigration law. In both his research and his clinical teaching, Kagan focuses on the tension between immigration law and civil rights.
Kagan has been published by numerous top law reviews and journals and wrote several of the most widely cited articles in the fields of international refugee and asylum law, which have been relied on by courts in multiple countries. Kagan’s research on credibility assessment in asylum cases “guided most subsequent research and analysis on the topic,” according to a 2012 commentary. He is frequently interviewed on immigration issues by local, national and global news media, and is a frequent Op-Ed writer, with his work appearing in The Washington Post, Salon.com, The Daily Beast, World Politics Review, and The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Before coming to UNLV's Boyd School of Law, Kagan spent 10 years building legal aid programs for refugees throughout the Middle East and Asia, and lived in London, Cairo, Beirut and Jerusalem. He held teaching positions at Tel Aviv University and the American University in Cairo. His role in expanding refugee legal aid in the global south was profiled in Zachary Kaufman’s Social Entrepreneurship in the Age of Atrocities (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012).
Education
- J.D., University of Michigan Law School
- B.A., Northwestern University
Related Links
Michael Kagan In The News
September 27, 2019
Muslims are misunderstood and former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid wants that to change.
September 10, 2019
The top Nevada official for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) recently complained to the Las Vegas Review Journal that it takes three or more years to deport mothers without criminal records. “Who knows what could happen in those three years? She could have three more babies,” said Dana Fishburn, acting deputy field office director for ICE in Nevada.
August 12, 2019
Adriana Arellano Cruz longed to see her children after being detained at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center inside the Henderson jail. But it seemed like a never-ending list of obstacles kept Cruz from wrapping her arms around her three, U.S. born children — Omar, 21, Kimberly, 16, and AJ, 12.
89.3 KPCC
July 9, 2019
This is the part of the United States Code that makes entering the U.S. without documents a misdemeanor. It’s repeal would mean that entering the U.S. without papers would be a civil offense, rather than a criminal one.
Articles Featuring Michael Kagan
Campus NewsSeptember 18, 2019
NPR’s Leila Fadel will moderate a discussion with scholars in civil rights, political science, and social justice to examine historical and modern-day experiences of Muslims in America.