Biography
Professor Carrasco is an expert in civil rights law, immigration law and constitutional law. He is the author of three national casebooks and numerous law review articles. He has taught as a visiting professor at Lewis & Clark, Oregon, San Diego, Seton Hall and Willamette and as a tenured professor at Villanova and Willamette. He also studied for extended periods at Oxford, Stanford and George Washington.
Carrasco served in the U.S. Department of Justice as a special assistant to the deputy assistant attorney general, then as a trial attorney in the Civil Rights Division, and as a consultant. Thereafter, he was lead counsel in nationwide class actions as directing attorney of the National Center for Immigrants' Rights (now the National Immigration Law Center) and was responsible for implementing the legalization program as the highest-ranking American lawyer in the Catholic Church on immigration matters when he served as national director of Immigration Services for the U.S. Catholic Conference.
In 2008, he joined the board of directors of the Oregon chapter of the American Constitution Society. The following year, he was appointed to the Oregon Commission on Hispanic Affairs by then Gov. Ted Kulongoski and confirmed by the Oregon Senate. In 2007, he was appointed by the governor to the Law Enforcement Contacts Policy and Data Review Committee. Carrasco was elected to the American Law Institute and appointed to the Governing Board of the Legal Defense Fund of the American Association of University Professors in 2002. That same year, he was an honoree of the Hispanic Bar Association of the District of Columbia Equal Justice Awards in Washington, D.C.
Carrasco is admitted to practice law by the State Bar of California (1979), District of Columbia (1980), United States Supreme Court (1983), and other federal appellate and trial courts.
Carrasco teaches Civil Rights, Constitutional Law, Immigration Law and Sexuality and Discrimination. He is an active member of the bar of California, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Supreme Court.