Back to School

"But I don't have any authority to say, 'Kris, you can't say what you choose to say.' I may disagree with him, but I think his positions are supported by the work he's done."

Reading through the accusations on the yellow flier in his office, Kobach at first is lost for words. Then he counters the flier's accusations one by one.

He defends the NSEERS program as a proven deterrent to terrorists — the program did result in the arrest of more than 12,000 violators of immigration law, according to the 9/11 Commission — and the BIA reform as having streamlined a hopelessly backlogged process. He scoffs at the argument that he's underqualified. He may not have "years of experience practicing garden-variety law on behalf of aliens," he says, but he has represented the government in high-profile immigration cases.

"That I, personally, have had some impact and am making some impact on immigration law bothers her, and she decided to lash out," Kobach says of Allen-Piedra. "But I don't think the law school is the appropriate place to do that. And if you're going to say something, at least get the facts right.

"So when I read that, I just had to laugh," he adds.

But today, that would be difficult. His voice is raspy. His eyes are tired. "I don't get enough sleep," he says, "and I'm swamped with all these requests."

He will spend a week taking depositions in the Hazleton case in mid-December and also has an upcoming speaking engagement at a law school in Colorado. His in box is clogged with unread e-mails, and, at any moment, he could get a call from Fox News to appear on The O'Reilly Factor, as he has done more than a dozen times in the past 18 months.

He admits that he has a hard time saying no.

On January 9, 20 third-year law students will crowd into a small seminar room.

They will arrive with two 1,200-page casebooks on immigration process and nationality laws. Those who have researched their first-day assignment will have poured through more than 50 pages of the thick texts and digested a 10,000-word article from Time magazine titled "Who Left the Door Open?"

At 3:30 p.m. — or, perhaps, a few moments late, with his cell phone pressed to his ear — Kobach will stride into a full immigration law and policy class.

As he reviews the five-page syllabus, he may point out that the excerpts from "Who Are We?" were written by his former mentor at Harvard, Samuel Huntington. In the state legislation section, he might explain his work with Hethmon to formulate the Hazleton case briefs. Under the "Illegal Aliens and Education" section, he might update the class on his case against the state of Kansas.

He might explain that, "as opposed to a course that studies the trees of immigration law, this steps back and studies the whole forest." At least that's what he told the Pitch in December, while he was vacationing at his family's condo in Vail, Colorado.

He might tell his students, as he told the Pitch, that the class will "explore the big legal issues that a typical immigration attorney would probably not come into contact with, but are the issues that will determine the future direction of the U.S."

Then they'll dive into the material.