2019: The year Trump "effectively" shut off asylum at the border and restricted immigration

Lee Gelernt has spent much of 2019 crisscrossing federal courts across the country trying to halt some of the Trump administration's most controversial immigration policies.

As the top immigration litigator at the American Civil Liberties Union, Gelernt is accustomed to high-stakes legal fights with different administrations. But in the past 12 months, the veteran civil rights lawyer has been going toe-to-toe with what he described as a relentless slew of "radical" proposals.

"The administration has literally every month enacted new fundamental restrictions on the rights of immigrants and in...