handcuffed the federal government’s lawyers from doing more.”Advertisement Continue reading the main storyAt the time, lawyers worked all over Washington, in the State Department, the Interior Department and elsewhere. Justice Department lawyers flexed their muscles defending the New Deal, and the agency expanded in scope. pulled it toward civil rights.” In the 1970s and early ’80s, the civil rights division’s ranks grew, attracting top law-school graduates to nonpartisan civil-service jobs. Advertisement Continue reading the main storyIt falls to immigration agents at the Department of Homeland Security, not the Department of Justice, to pick people up. “Our visions of immigrant rights and civil rights were inextricably intertwined,” Tom Perez, then head of the civil rights division, told me.

Source: New York Times February 28, 2017 10:00 UTC