The New Yorker on Kris Kobach

Jonathan Blitzer has a column in this week’s New Yorker on Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, the architect of numerous state immigration bills aimed at achieving “enforcement by attrition” (i.e., making life so difficult for undocumented immigrants that they choose to self-deport) as well as NSEERS, the special registration program for nationals of certain (mostly Middle Eastern) countries that was discontinued after found to be ineffective.

Kobach has received attention this week for posing in a photo with Donald Trump and revealing portions of a memo that presumably describes his plans for immigration enforcement policy under the new Administration.  As the article notes, “In the photograph that was taken after Kobach’s meeting with Trump, one phrase from his memo stood out: the definition of ‘criminal alien’ as ‘any alien arrested for any crime.’”

-JKoh