Kris Kobach: The Man Behind the Immigration Crackdown

Kris Kobach has written or defended almost every hard-line bill against illegal immigrants in the country. Tony Dokoupil on the lightning rod’s elitist background, ties to John Ashcroft, and charges of racism.

When President Obama skipped lightly over immigration reform in his State of the Union address, wheels surely turned in the minds of local lawmakers nationwide. Frustrated by the federal stalemate, cities and states have crafted their own curbs on illegal residency, punishing businesses and landlords that cater to the undocumented. Arizona even criminalized paperless trespassing, ordering police with "reasonable suspicion" to check people’s immigration status. And last week, it went even further, introducing a bill with the unprecedented aim of denying—or at least attempting to deny—citizenship to children whose parents are here on the sly.

What unites these bills, however, is more than their hard line approach to border control. It’s their ties a single man: Kris Kobach, a Wisconsin-born former law professor who for nearly a decade has been the body and brains of the law-and-order right, especially in the ugly fight over illegal immigration. The blue-eyed 44-year-old has authored, aided or officially defended virtually every controversial immigration stance in the country, beginning with work as chief immigration adviser in John Ashcroft’s Department of Justice.

Following the terror strikes of September 2001, Kobach coauthored a memo—which he has since cited in defense of Arizona policy—arguing that states may act as an arm of immigration control. He also created a now-defunct, much-decried fingerprint program for Muslims and Middle Easterners in the U.S, and won soaring praise from his former boss. "Kris is one of the finest young people I have ever dealt with," says Ashcroft, who calls birthright citizenship "an unresolved legal question" and supports Arizona’s move to make illegal immigration a state crime—adding, "I was surprised the Department of Justice challenged it."

Yet 2011 may be Kobach’s most influential year yet. From a base in Kansas, where he is the newly seated secretary of State, Kobach will help Arizona defend his laws against all-comers, including the Department of Justice and the American Civil Liberties Union (both of which have sued the state, claiming that immigration is solely a federal matter). He’ll also counsel a dozen or so states that are considering copycat laws, including a coordinated assault on birthright citizenship. And he’ll argue at least four ongoing immigration-related court cases, including lawsuits against California (for extending in-state college tuition rates to the undocumented) and San Francisco (for failing to notify immigration authorities before a thrice-arrested alien murdered three people). It’s a "legal jihad," according to a new report the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which calls Kobach’s career "a trail of tears" for all.

Kobach himself appears to be doing just fine. With sticky ideas and Disney good looks, he’s become a fixture on Fox News, godhead to his most ardent followers, and a hard man to dismiss. In fact, his path to public life is so pedigreed it makes John Kerry seem rough hewn: top undergraduate honors at Harvard, a Marshall Scholarship to Oxford, where he picked up a Ph.D., a law degree from Yale, where he was an editor of the Yale Law Journal, and missionary work in Africa. He even won two master’s national rowing championships in the men’s double scull.

But even in the heart of East Coast liberalism, Kobach’s conservatism actually deepened over time, according to people close to him, including his mother, high school debate coach, friends and professional colleagues—including Ashcroft, who partnered with Kobach on immigration policy but also joined him on hiking and bodysurfing trips outside the Beltway. The only son of a car dealer and homemaker, Kobach is of French, German, and Nordic heritage, his ancestors passing through New York’s Ellis Island in the late 1800s. ("It was legal," promises his mother.) By high school, he was known as the most right-wing member of the debate team. At Harvard, he led the Republican Club, opposing the in-vogue idea of divesting from apartheid South Africa (though he did oppose apartheid itself), and gravitating toward the conservative lion Samuel Huntington (of "Clash of Civilizations" fame), who became an early mentor. But it was 9/11, and his realization that several hijackers had been in the country illegally, that crystallized for him the importance of border security as a way to protect both lives and livelihoods. "American sovereignty is at stake," he tells The Daily Beast and Newsweek. "You can’t have open immigration and a welfare state."

So in the absence of Congressional action, Kobach is after what he calls the best alternative. "People often see federal immigration policy as a dichotomy between amnesty and deportation," he says. "But the most rational approach is a third one: You ratchet up the enforcement so that people make their own decisions to start following the law." In other words, take away the reasons people come to America illegally—access to education, work, housing and, yes, citizenship for their children—and, Kobach says, they will "self-deport." Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), one of many organizations and individuals who support Kobach, calls it "going home."

Although they have inspired tens of thousands of people to protest, Kobach’s legal positions are actually plausible, even clever, according to some constitutional experts, who say he is clarifying the fuzzy line between state and federal power, what the government can do, and what it should do. "They’re not crazy, way-out arguments," says Peter Schuck, a Yale law professor who has invited Kobach to lecture on the constitution. But civil liberties groups, immigrant advocates, and others bristle in response. The most unsavory issue is Kobach’s close ties to FAIR—which the Southern Poverty Law Center says is an anti-Latino "hate group"—and firebrands like Phoenix Sheriff Joe Arpaio (who hails Kobach "a hero"), which fuels accusations that Kobach is himself less an Ivy League scholar than a Major League bigot. "I don’t have a racist or nativist bone in my body," he scoffs, although he winkingly understands why people might say so. "In a legal debate, when your opponents turn to name calling, it’s a good sign you’ve already won."

Tony Dokoupil is a staff writer and editor at Newsweek.

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