About me
Nicholas Espíritu is the Deputy Legal Director at the National Immigration Law Center and a graduate of the Critical Race Studies Program. His legal career has included challenges to President Trump’s travel ban targeting immigrants from predominantly Muslim countries and Arizona’s anti-Latino and anti-immigrant law SB 1070. Espíritu was part of the legal team that advised undocumented youth in their push for the executive action that later became the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and defended that program against legal challenges by various states. Before joining NILC, he was attorney with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, where his focus was on voting rights, including challenges to state redistricting plans that diluted Latino voting strength, efforts to impose voter identification requirements, and efforts to exclude noncitizens from legislative apportionment. Espíritu was a Fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights at the Harvard Kennedy School and a Lecturer at UCLA School of Law where he taught Voting Rights and an Immigration Policy Clinic. His most recent piece, “Education and Democracy from Brown to Plyler,” examines how the legacy of these cases ensuring educational access for marginalized groups should inform the contestations over judicial review and democratic legitimacy.
