Professor Johnson Comments on Immigration Agents Arresting People Without Records

Professor Kevin R. Johnson spoke to the San Jose Mercury News on March 8 about the Bay Area News Group’s findings of a surge in arrests by immigration agents of people with no apparent criminal records. The number of such arrests increased by about five times in the first nine months of President Donald Trump’s second term, the Mercury News reported.

Johnson clarified for the newspaper that most “noncriminal removals” in previous years likely involved people who had just crossed the U.S.-Mexico border, not people in Northern California.

Kevin R. Johnson is a distinguished professor of law, Mabie-Apallas Professor of Public Interest Law and Martin Luther King Jr. Professor of Law. Johnson is the director of the Aoki Center for Critical Race and Nation Studies and also has an appointment as professor of Chicana/o studies at UC Davis. He served as dean of UC Davis Law from 2008 to 2024.