By Andrew Cohen
Innovative and powerful leadership is evident throughout the UC Berkeley Law community, from students and alumni to faculty and staff. We highlight various examples to showcase how such leadership advances justice, accountability, and the rule of law.
For nearly 50 years, a profound sense of good fortune has fueled one of America’s most relentless, passionate, and illustrious immigration lawyers.
“I recognized very early in my career that it’s simply luck that I was born in a country and at a time when I had greater opportunities to pursue dreams that others never get to realize,” says Ira Kurzban ’76.
Past president and former general counsel of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, Kurzban is a founding partner of the Miami firm Kurzban Kurzban Tetzeli & Pratt and chairs its immigration department. He has litigated over 100 federal cases in the field, including three before the U.S. Supreme Court, as well as many cases under the Alien Tort Claims Act and the Torture Victim Protection Act. Among his many high-profile victories: obtaining a $500 million judgment against Haiti’s former dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier.
Kurzban has lectured around the world, published extensively on immigration law issues, won many prestigious awards (see below), and is the author of Kurzban’s Immigration Law Sourcebook — the most-used immigration guide in the United States.
When he began writing it in 1990, it reached about 400 pages. Now in its 19th edition, the publication exceeds 3,000 pages. Kurzban calls that simply a function of keeping pace with the fast-expanding Code of Federal Regulations — less than 200 pages in the late 1970s when he first delved into immigration work, and now over 1,100.
“Immigration work is complex, but there’s nothing in the practice of law more rewarding than helping individuals and families change their lives,” he says. “In most fields, lawyers are fighting over money in one form or another. In immigration, you’re fighting for people’s lives, their futures, and the future generations to come.”
Bill Sokol ’76, a law school roommate for two years, says Kurzban “realized there was no resource lawyers could look to that explained everything going on in immigration, so he started developing one to fill that glaring need and to help the people worked with.”
During a recent visit with him in Florida, Sokol saw Kurzban work on updating the sourcebook each night after coming home from a full day’s work.
“Every immigration law judge and every lawyer in the field has that book on their desk. He’s at the head of the field,” says Sokol, noting a recent legal publication in China with a cover photo of Kurzban and the headline ‘King of the Immigration Lawyers.’ “In most legal fields, there are a few seminal publications that people refer to. But in immigration law it’s Kurzban, period.”
A surprising comparison
An adjunct faculty member at the University of Miami School of Law, Kurzban catches his students’ attention by describing how immigration law is a lot like tax law.
“There are statutes, regulations, opinions, manuals, and forms that have the force of law, an incomprehensible numbers system, and a field that touches upon most other areas of law such as family, criminal, corporate, tax, and Social Security to name just a few,” he explains. “Although there are great political debates about immigration and everyone has an opinion about what our policies should be, it takes years to master the intricacies of the law.”
He points to the 2020 case Torres v. Barr, where the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals wrote that the Immigration and Nationality Act’s thorny provisions have provoked comparisons to a “morass,” a “Gordian knot,” and “King Minos’s labyrinth in ancient Greece.”
Kurzban’s path was hardly predestined. Though Berkeley was one of the nation’s few law schools that taught immigration law when he was a student in the mid 1970s, the field wasn’t on his radar. Interested in labor law, he co-founded the Berkeley Journal of Industrial Relations (now the Berkeley Journal of Employment & Labor Law) and started in that area.
But with a tepid labor movement at the time in South Florida, Kurzban began expanding his reach and also began doing civil rights work for the National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee in Miami. Soon after, the National Council of Churches and members of the Haitian community asked him to begin working on immigration issues related to discrimination against Haitians — a fast-growing number of whom had Haitians fled the country’s rising political violence. Thousands were detained in harsh conditions, and Kurzban worked tirelessly to help them establish safe immigration status in the U.S.
“Ira quickly became known as someone who would represent immigrants fully and forcefully and was ready to do anything necessary on their behalf,” Sokol says. “He’s willing to use every hour he can pursuing some measure of justice.”
Public interest work had long been a priority. While in law school, Kurzban, Sokol, and other classmates — with the famous civil rights lawyer Leonard Boudin, then a visiting professor — created the nonprofit Berkeley Law Foundation to provide legal services to underserved communities through grants and fellowships. America’s first organization of its kind, now approaching its 50th anniversary, the foundation continues to garner support from alumni, students, and others who fund public interest projects and careers in social justice law.
“I’m pleasantly surprised it has lasted all these years and continues the idea that our responsibility is to encourage young lawyers to make their careers in public service,” Kurzban says.
No letting up
Some of Ira Kurzban’s many honors and awards:
- Leonard J. Theberge Award for Private International Law (American Bar Association)
- One of the nation’s top 20 immigration lawyers according to National Law Journal
- Repeatedly named to Lawdragon’s list of America’s top 500 lawyers
- Listed for over 25 years in Best Lawyers in America (immigration and employment law)
- Named one of 100 American heroes in Newsweek’s issue commemorating the Statue of Liberty’s 100th anniversary
- One of the world’s 23 most highly regarded corporate immigration lawyers (International Who’s Who)
Co-founder of the Immigrants’ List, the nation’s first pro-immigrant political action committee, Kurzban has spent nearly a half-century leading a determined effort to improve the treatment of refugees, ensure that federal immigration agencies follow the rule of law, and reform immigration law so it adheres to constitutional norms.
These days, that involved challenging the federal government’s push to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitian refugees six months earlier than the date established by the Biden administration. Kurzban’s legal team persuaded a New York federal court to restore the original date of Feb. 3, 2026, and is now suing to challenge the termination of TPS after that date.
“Why would it make any sense to deport undocumented people who pay $92 billion in taxes to the Treasury each year in the hope of becoming lawful?” he says. “How could it possibly make sense to cut off foreign students who are the lifeline of many small colleges in America, who boost the economy by billions of dollars a year, and who help us achieve the innovation and intellect that we need for the future of our country? “
Noting that 43% of Fortune 500 hundred companies were started or run by immigrants or first-generation Americans, Kurzban decries seeing more immigrants being incarcerated at taxpayer expense.
“These aren’t prisons for criminals; they’re prisons for people who have been in the U.S. peacefully and durably for decades,” he says. “Imagine what we could do in early childhood education, in public school, in Medicare for all with $100 billion. So here I am continuing the fight. I’m even on TikTok.”
As for what has kept him at the forefront of immigration law for nearly 50 years, Kurzban cites the same traits he views as essential for any lawyer: “Judgment, passion, empathy, endless work, and the belief that your role as a lawyer is to support others in their struggles for a more just and equitable world.”