By The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services

Hundreds of gang members, murderers, and sex offenders exploited a vulnerability in America’s immigration systemWASHINGTON – Today U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services published a report identifying significant national security and integrity vulnerabilities in the Special Immigrant Juvenile program. These national security vulnerabilities provided a path to lawful permanent residence and eventually citizenship to criminal aliens, gang members, and known or suspected terrorists.The “Criminality, Gangs, and Program Integrity Concerns in Special Immigrant Juvenile Petitions” report reviews over 300,000 aliens’ SIJ petitions filed from the beginning of fiscal year 2013 through February 2025. According to the report:More than half of SIJ petitioners filing in FY 2024 were over age 18;Many entered the United States without inspection;Many came from countries identified as posing national security concerns, demonstrating the lax screening and vetting and anti-fraud policies of the Biden Administration; andSome SIJ petitioners engaged in age and identity fraud, including falsifying their name, date of birth, and country of citizenship.The report also identified 853 known or suspected gang members who filed SIJ petitions, most of which were approved. More than 600 MS-13 gang members filed SIJ petitions, and more than 500 were approved. MS-13 gang member SIJ petitioners include at least 70 charged with federal racketeering offenses and many others charged with violent crimes in the United States. Other approved gang members include more than 100 known or suspected members of the 18th Street gang; at least three Tren de Aragua gang members; and dozens of Sureños and Norteños gang members.“Criminal aliens are infiltrating the U.S. through a program meant to protect abused, neglected, or abandoned alien children,” said USCIS Spokesman Matthew J. Tragesser. “This report exposes how the open border lobby and activist judges are exploiting loopholes in the name of aiding helpless children.”On June 6, USCIS rescinded the policy of categorically considering deferred action for special immigrant juveniles. The Trump administration also is exploring further action to mitigate vulnerabilities in the integrity of the SIJ program, address significant national security and public safety concerns, and ensure the SIJ classification remains available for the juveniles it was intended to protect.Congress first established the SIJ program in 1990 and has amended it several times to allow young illegal aliens, whom a juvenile court has determined cannot reunify with one or both parents due to abuse, neglect, or abandonment, to apply for SIJ classification and lawful permanent resident status and have an eventual path to U.S. citizenship. By law, there are no criminal bars or good moral character requirements for SIJ petition approval.

Washington, DC: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, 2025. 36p.

By Travis J. Masters, Rebecca Gambler

CBP relied on contracts to operate and maintain soft-sided facilities (SSF). These facilities provide support and services when additional processing and holding capacity is needed for individuals apprehended along the southwest border. DHS also received funding to construct Joint Processing Centers (JPC)—permanent facilities that DHS expects will be more cost-effective than SSFs in the future. GAO was asked to review CBP’s and DHS’s use and oversight of SSFs and JPCs. This report examines, among other things, (1) how CBP used contracts to support its SSF needs, and (2) the extent to which CBP and DHS engaged in planning efforts for SSF and JPC related acquisitions. GAO analyzed contracting data on SSF contract obligations for fiscal years 2019-2024, and reviewed DHS budget plans, acquisition policies, and cost estimates for SSFs and JPCs. GAO also visited four selected SSF locations in Yuma and Tucson, AZ, El Paso, TX, and San Diego, CA based in part on apprehension and cost data; reviewed a nongeneralizable sample of eight of 69 contracts for SSFs and JPC construction contract documents; and interviewed DHS and CBP officials. What GAO Recommends GAO is making six recommendations, including that CBP identifies and documents lessons learned from its SSF acquisitions; and that DHS documents its process for identifying future JPC locations and completes a life-cycle cost estimate for the Laredo JPC. DHS concurred with the recommendations  

Washington, DC: United States Government Accountability Office  - GAO, 2025. 64p

By Daniel Herda and Amshula Divadkar

Whether it be about population size, origin, or legal status, what ordinary citizens imagine about immigrants is often incorrect. Furthermore, these misperceptions predict greater dislike of foreigners. But, if one considers all the facts that people could get wrong, researchers have likely only scratched the surface. To advance toward a more complete catalog of misperceptions, the current study focuses on one commonly held stereotype: immigrants’ propensity for crime. Using original data from a sample of college students, we examine the crime perception alongside nine established components of the imagined immigration, comparing their extent and consequences for a hypothetical anti-immigrant policy. Findings indicate that misperception levels vary across the ten factual questions considered. Many mistakes are consequential, but the criminal stereotype is the most damaging. It constitutes an important missing component in imagined immigration studies. The findings present implications for anti-immigrant sentiment research and for developing a more accurately informed population.

Migration Letters, 20(1), 71–87

By Ximena Canal Laiton

This report examines the experiences of migrant women in transit in South America. It is based on 4Mi1 surveys and interviews with migrant women and key informants conducted in Peru, Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Uruguay, Colombia, and Brazil between December 2024 and May 2025. Addressing the lack of information on women’s experience of migration in the region, this report presents findings on risks, sexual and reproductive health issues, the gender-based division of labour, mechanisms and barriers to self-protection, access to assistance, and the needs of migrant women in transit. The report provides empirical evidence to inform decision-makers and humanitarian actors. Key findings • Women are consistently affected by the general risks of migration routes in South America, in particular mentioning theft, extortion, bribery, and verbal violence. In addition, this research identified specific risks of sexual violence for women in transit, such as abuse and exploitation, which may go unnoticed by many migrant women despite being flagged by key informants. • The adverse conditions of migration have a major impact on the sexual and reproductive health of some women. During the journey, pregnancy, breastfeeding, and menstruation often occur in inadequate circumstances, which increases the health risks for women or their babies, born or to be born, including morbidity, mortality, low birth weight, malnutrition, vaginal infections, and toxic shock syndrome, among others. • Constant stress, the uncertainty of migration, migratory grief, and other related factors negatively impact women’s mental health during migration. The data shows that migrant women experience feelings of sadness, frustration, fear, and guilt. • Women adopt various self-protection strategies to cope with the dangers of the journey. The main measures include staying in touch with family, planning the journey, and travelling with companions. While emotional care strategies exist, the women interviewed reported using very few and revealed a persistent lack of tools to manage emotional challenges. • The gender-based division of labour persists during migration, with women being assigned domestic and care tasks. Women are primarily responsible for caring for children and other dependents, as well as organising meals and groceries for the travel group. • Despite the meaningful humanitarian response along migration routes in South America, these services still need to be strengthened. Almost half of the women respondents reported not receiving assistance during their journey, while most stated that they had unmet needs at the time of the survey, mainly needing cash, accommodation, and medical care.

London: Mixed Migration Centre, 2025. 28p.

By Bail for Immigration Detainees -

The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act (“LASPO”) took most immigration cases out of scope of legal aid. However, Exceptional Case Funding (“ECF”) was introduced as a ‘safety net’ for people whose cases fell out of the scope of legal aid but whose exclusion would result in breaches of their human rights. This report explored the hurdles of applying for ECF and then finding a legal aid lawyer for people facing deportation and those whose claims to remain in the UK were based on Article 8 (private & family life) of the Human Rights Act.

The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act (“LASPO”) took most immigration cases out of scope of legal aid. However, Exceptional Case Funding (“ECF”) was introduced as a ‘safety net’ for people whose cases fell out of the scope of legal aid but whose exclusion would result in breaches of their human rights. This report explored the hurdles of applying for ECF and then finding a legal aid lawyer for people facing deportation and those whose claims to remain in the UK were based on Article 8 (private & family life) of the Human Rights Act.

London: BiD, 2025. 41p. 

By Galya Ben-Arieh and Volker M. Heins

This article explores the emergence of the crime of migrant smuggling and its legitimising narratives as tools of global migration management. We examine the ways in which the language of ‘migrant smuggling’ was introduced into and then lifted out of the context of international law and recontextualised to serve the purposes of migration management. The main consequence of this fusion of law, narrative, and policy is the definition of the legality of actors and actions along the migration routes across the Sahara, the Mediterranean and Europe. We examine the conflict between two dominant narratives of legality: the smugglers’ narrative vs the rescue narrative. Laws designed to protect people are being turned against the people they were ostensibly designed to protect. We argue that the smuggler narrative facilitates policies whereby wealthy states, under the pretence of law, contain migration from the South within the broader framework of a divisive global politics of life. Since these policies are implemented through bribery, blackmail, and brute force, they are displaying the ugly face of global migration governance without contributing in any way to a solution of the problems driving migration in the current global environment

Third World Quarterly 2021, Vol. 42, No. 1, 200–217Criminalisation of kindness: narratives of legality in the European politics of migration containmentGalya Ben-Arieh a and Volker M. Heins

By Eamon Aloyo & Eugenio Cusumano

Much of the recent debate on immigration to Europe has focused on how many refugees should be allowed to enter and how refugees should be distributed among EU member states, but there has been less academic focus on under what conditions, if any, human smuggling is morally permissible. How should we morally assess those who make a business out of helping migrants reach their desired destination and those who pay smugglers to reach their destination? We argue that human smuggling is morally permissible under some conditions even if it is illegal. Human trafficking, by contrast, is immoral and should be illegal. The moral conditions for permissible human smuggling are sometimes being met on the route from Africa to Europe (but are all too often grossly violated). We consider and rebut objections based on the arguments that a legal prohibition on human smuggling must translate into a moral one, and that human smuggling violates the rights of individuals to freedom of association in receiving countries. We conclude with policy implications

Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 24(2), 133–156.

By Corey Robinson

Using an analytic of problematisation that incorporates insights from governmentality studies and migration studies, this article documents and conceptualises the role of capacity building in the offshoring and outsourcing of Canada’s anti-smuggling policy. I examine the problematisation of migrant smuggling in interviews, access to information requests and publicly available texts to show how, why and with what effects, the Canadian government, in collaboration with UN agencies, engaged in capacity building across Southeast Asia and West Africa to combat migrant smuggling and interdict migrant vessels before they departed for Canada. I argue that under the technocratic banner of capacity building, anti-smuggling policy constitutes migrant smuggling as an object of discourse. Anti-smuggling policy, I contend, frames, rationalises and obscures the interdiction of refugees and the externalisation of protection as politically neutral, technocratic efforts to build capacity to combat migrant smuggling. Though capacity building may include apparently positive measures to enhance international cooperation, if it frustrates access to asylum, as this article suggests, it can be said to externalise international protection responsibilities, contrary to the principles outlined in the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration and the Global Compact on Refugees.

Geopolitics, 29(1), 13–38

By Corey Robinson

Offering return assistance and financial inducements to migrants and asylum-seekers, assisted voluntary return and reintegration (AVRR) programmes are critical to the management of migration. While AVRR programmes have emerged as an area of study in their own right, little attention has been paid to the role of these schemes in the transnational politics of anti-smuggling policy. Building on insights from border studies, migration studies and security studies, this article examines the Global Assistance for Irregular Migrants (GAIM) programme. The GAIM programme is an AVRR programme funded by the Canadian government and implemented by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), which targeted Sri Lankan nationals stranded following the disruption of smuggling ventures in West Africa. This article examines how the GAIM programme framed, rationalised and obscured the practice of neoliberal deportation as a humanitarian gesture in the interests of migrants themselves. It documents and conceptualises the humanitarian claims, narratives and representations mobilised by Canada and the IOM to explain and justify the return of stranded asylum-seekers. It argues that the GAIM programme can be analysed as a form of humanitarian securitisation, which obscures the politics of anti-smuggling policy, masks the violence of deportation and legitimises the return of stranded asylum-seekers.

Third World Quarterly Volume 43, 2022 - Issue 4

By Eyene Okpanachi & Christian Kaunert

This article investigates the influence of non-state actors’ activities on migrants’ journeys and the resulting phenomena of ‘stranded migrants’ and forced (im)mobilities in Libya. Due to the intense instability in Libya in the post-Gaddafi era and increasing restrictions on EU borders, return migration became a major plank of the EU’s migration policy. The article examines the distinct nature of the European Union’s externalisation policies and practices regarding migration. Specifically, it explores how these policies, when implemented in politically unstable contexts such as Libya, involve armed actors (or militias) who enforce immigration control through the use of violence against migrants. As a result of these practices, distinct dynamics of multi-level governance (MLG) have emerged, in which informal non-state actors play leading roles in the complicated nexus between informality and formality, making migration to Europe and the return of stranded migrants to their home countries difficult.

Third World Quarterly, Volume 45, 2024 - Issue 17-18

By Karolina Augustovaa, Helena Carrapicob, and Jelena Obradović-Wochnik

Migrants’ involvement in smuggling increases alongside restricted cross-border movement and violent borders, yet this dynamic is usually examined from migrants’ position as clients.In this article, we move away from migrants and smugglers as two separate roles and question migrants’ aspirations to and experiences of resorting to smuggling networks as workers in the context of EU land borders, where direct violence is used daily to fight cross-border crime. By doing so, we move furtherthe examination of fluid relations in smuggling provisions and the way they are intertwined with care and exploitation, asshaped and circumscribed by violent borders. The article illus-trates the intersections between border violence and migrants active involvement in smuggling by drawing on the case studyof an anonymised Border Town and multi-site, multi-author fieldwork from Serbia and Bosnia. By questioning migrants experiences of shifting roles from clients to service providers,and by taking into account their work in smuggling provision,we show that, in a situation of protracted vulnerability orche-strated by border violence, state and law enforcement, the categories – “migrant” and “smugglers” – can blur.Introduction I am a smuggler. Without smugglers, no people would reach Europe, not evenme’, said Mula, while sitting in a train station. Mula, like dozens of other people around him, travelled through the ‘Balkan Route’ to attempt hisjourney across the increasingly violent borders with the EU states, such asCroatia. However, Mula had no money, and the only way to pay for clandes-tine transport was using his own labour as a smuggler, as he called himself.A blurring of clients and perpetrators in organised crime is not a new phenomenon (Lo Iacono 2014). Same patterns of fluid relations also takeplace in smuggling, an activity recognised in policy terms as impersonal organised crime; a feature that, however, often lacks in human smuggling

GEOPOLITICS2023, VOL. 28, NO. 2, 619–640

By Angelo Martins Junior & Julia O’Connell Davidson

Antislavery actors evoke the history of the transatlantic slave trade in campaigns to mobilise action to address the suffering experienced by contemporary migrants described as ‘victims of trafficking’. That framing has been picked up by state actors who present measures to supress unauthorised migration per se as necessary to protect migrants from a ‘modern-day slave trade’. Yet the parallel between trafficking and the slave trade is undermined by the fact that people who today are described as ‘trafficked’, as much as those described as ‘smuggled’, actively wish to travel and do so in the hope that by moving, they will secure greater freedoms. This article therefore asks whether there are similarities between the journeys of contemporary unauthorised migrants and those of enslaved people who fled from slavery in the Atlantic World, and if so, why. Bringing data from historical sources on slave flight into dialogue with data on the journeys of contemporary sub-Saharan African migrants to Europe and Brazil, it identifies a number of experiential parallels, and argues that for those concerned with migrants’ rights, enslaved people’s fugitivity potentially offers a more fruitful point of historical comparison than does the slave trade.

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Volume 48, 2022 - Issue 7

By Monica Massari

This article addresses the counter-effects of the politics of externalization of European frontiers in Libya through a qualitative analysis of a case study concerning a group of Somali asylum-seekers who, after being held and tortured in Libyan detention centres, managed to cross the Mediterranean and arrived in Italy where they accidentally met and, thus, pressed charges against their torturer. Based on the information provided in the judicial files containing their testimonies, which led to the first recognition by a European court of the unbearable forms of violence suffered by migrants in Libya, this article offers a critical reflection on the implications of migration control enforcement promoted at the EU’s borders on the European civil and political community. Moreover, it provides a reflection on the challenges raised for migration studies by survivors’ testimonies on the wider implications of subjective experiences and biographical narratives in illuminating emerging domains of social responsibility and political action.

Ethnic and Racial Studies, Volume 45, 2022 - Issue 16

By Human Rights Watch

Whether fleeing conflict or risks of persecution in their countries, escaping poverty, or seeking a better life, increasing numbers of migrants and asylum seekers have taken the “Atlantic Route” from Africa’s northwest coast towards Spain’s Canary Islands since 2020, with more arriving by boat in 2024 than ever before. In Mauritania, a key transit country along the route, authorities have cracked down on irregular migration while the European Union and Spain have ramped up efforts to outsource or “externalize” migration controls. “They Accused Me of Trying to Go to Europe” documents abuses by Mauritanian security forces against migrants, asylum seekers, and people accused of migrant smuggling between 2020 and early 2025. Based on interviews with over 200 people, including over 100 migrants and asylum seekers, the report documents violence, arbitrary arrests, extortion, racist treatment, inhumane detention, and collective expulsions to Mauritania’s land borders with Mali and Senegal, where people have been exposed to risks in remote border areas – including due to active armed conflict in Mali. The report also traces the extent and impact of the externalization of border controls and migration management by the EU and Spain in Mauritania, including increased funding and other support to Mauritanian security forces, despite abuses. It highlights deaths and disappearances in the Atlantic due, in part, to inadequate search-andrescue, and reveals the negative impacts of Mauritania’s interceptions and forced returns of migrant boats, supported by the EU and Spain. Human Rights Watch calls on Mauritania to respect migrants’ rights, building recent efforts to begin to address concerns, and calls on Spain and the EU to ensure human rights monitoring of funded projects and set criteria for suspending funding if rights violations continue.  

New York: HRW, 2025. 160p.

By Gideon Christian

Facial recognition technology (FRT) is an artificial intelligence (AI)-based biometric technology that utilizes computer vision to analyze facial images and identify individuals by their unique facial features. This sophisticated AI technology uses advanced computer algorithms to generate a biometric template from a facial image. The biometric template contains unique facial characteristics represented by dots, which can be used to match identical or similar images in a database for identification purposes. The biometric template is often likened to a unique facial signature for each individual.

A significant rise in the deployment of AI-based FRT has occurred in recent years across the public and private sectors of Canadian society. Within the public sector, its application encompasses law enforcement in criminal and immigration contexts, among many others. In the private sector, it has been used for tasks such as exam proctoring in educational settings, fraud prevention in the retail industry, unlocking mobile devices, sorting and tagging of digital photos, and more. The widespread use of AI facial recognition in both the public and private sectors has generated concerns regarding its potential to perpetuate and reflect historical racial biases and injustices. The emergence of terms like “the new Jim Crow” and “the new Jim Code” draws a parallel between the racial inequalities of the post-US Civil War Jim Crow era and the racial biases present in modern AI technologies. These comparisons underscore the need for a critical examination of how AI technologies, including FRT, might replicate or exacerbate systemic racial inequities and injustices of the past.

This research paper seeks to examine critical issues arising from the adoption and use of FRT by the public sector, particularly within the framework of immigration enforcement in the Canadian immigration system. It delves into recent Federal Court of Canada litigation relating to the use of the technology in refugee revocation proceedings by agencies of the Canadian government. By delving into these legal cases, the paper will explore the implications of FRT on the fairness and integrity of immigration processes, highlighting the broader ethical and legal issues associated with its use in administrative processes.

The paper begins with a concise overview of the Canadian immigration system and the administrative law principles applicable to its decision-making process. This is followed by an examination of the history of integrating AI technologies into the immigration process more broadly. Focusing specifically on AI-based FRT, the paper will then explore the issues of racial bias associated with its use and discuss why addressing these issues is crucial for ensuring fairness in the Canadian immigration process. This discussion will lead to a critical analysis of Federal Court litigation relating to the use of FRT in refugee status revocation, further spotlighting the evidence of racial bias in the technology's deployment within the immigration system.

The paper will then proceed to develop the parallels between racial bias evident in contemporary AI-based FRT (the “new” Jim Crow) and racial bias of the past (the “old” Jim Crow). By focusing on the Canadian immigration context, the paper seeks to uncover the subtle, yet profound ways in which AI-based FRT, despite its purported neutrality and objectivity, can reinforce racial biases of the past. Through a comprehensive analysis of current practices, judicial decisions, and the technology's deployment, this paper aims to contribute to the ongoing dialogue about technology and race. It challenges the assumption that technological advancements are inherently equitable, urging a re-evaluation of how these tools are designed, developed, and deployed, especially in sensitive areas such as refugee status revocation, where the stakes for fairness and equity are particularly high.

69 McGill Law Journal 441 (October 2024)

By Elizabeth Choo

Politicians justify U.S. immigration laws and policies by claiming that harsh immigration enforcement will deter unauthorized migrants. This Article demonstrates that migrant decision-making in practice undermines common assumptions underlying how immigration deterrence is expected to operate. By highlighting research demonstrating that immigration law does not have a significant deterrent effect, this Article invites scholars and activists to challenge the use of deterrence logic as a façade to legitimate cruelty towards migrants, especially as that cruelty disproportionately affects migrants of color. This Article recommends decriminalizing unauthorized entry and reentry and ending civil immigration detention as initial steps in creating a fairer and more just future outside the confines of deterrence logic.

  N.Y.U. REVIEW OF LAW & SOCIAL CHANGE [Vol. 48:161, 2025.

By Quah Ee Ling

Featuring stories of early settler and contemporary Asian migrant women in Asia-Pacific region, Fire Dragon Feminism discusses Asian migrant women’s encounters with coloniality and racial capitalism at their workplace and in their everyday life. Centring anti-colonial, anti-racist feminist philosophies and strategies, this open access book introduces 'fire dragon feminism' - a migrant feminist strand that aims to blow flames at colonial, racial capitalist and neoliberal structures and build solidarities for more just and sustainable futures. Based on in-depth interviews with 40 Asian migrant employees in Australian universities, the book examines how Asian migrant women are implicated and complicit in white race-making projects while being subjected to racialisation and marginalisation simultaneously. Fire Dragon Feminism presents a historicised and sociological discussion of the contradictions, trade-offs, complicities and refusals in the Asian migrant women’s tales of migration, coloniality and racial capitalism. The author ends the book with a celebration of anti-colonial, anti-racist grassroots feminist activisms.

London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2025. 

By Boccagni, Paolo

What does everyday life look like for young men who flee to Europe, survive, and are then assigned temporary housing? Hypersurveillance or parallel normality, irrelevance, or even nothingness? Based on four years of ethnographic research, Undoing Nothing recounts the untold story of Italian asylum seekers’ struggles to produce relevance—that is, to carve out meaning, control, and direction from their legal and existential liminality. Their ways of inhabiting space and time rest on a deeply ambivalent position: together and alone, inside and outside, absent and present. Their racialized bodies dwell in their assigned residence while their selves inhabit a suspended translocal space of moral economies, nightmares, and furtive dreams. This book illuminates a distinctly modern form of purgatory, offering both a perceptive critique of state responses to the so-called refugee crisis and nuanced psychological portraits of a demographic rarely afforded narrative depth and grace. “Undoing Nothing is an exceptional book. It moves us away from dramatic and sensational descriptions of refugee predicaments and toward a detailed and perceptive analysis of the ways people navigate and manage their lives in the interstices between being stuck and in motion, surviving and aspiring.”

Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2025. 228p

Edited by Rainer Bauböck

Citizenship is frequently invoked both as an instrument and goal of immigrant integration. Yet, in migration contexts, citizenship also marks a distinction between members and outsiders based on their different relations to particular states. A migration perspective highlights the boundaries of citizenship and political control over entry and exit as well as the fact that foreign residents remain in most countries deprived of core rights of political participation. This book summarizes current theories and empirical research on the legal status and political participation of migrants in European democracies.

Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2006. 128p.

By Jennifer Anzardo Valdes, et al.

For years, thousands of children have made the difficult decision to flee from their countries with the hope of securing safety and security in the United States. Their reasons for fleeing vary but there are common themes. Many of these children are seeking protection from human trafficking, targeted gang violence in the form of assaults, kidnappings, or extortions, as well as domestic violence and child abuse.

In 2019 alone, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) detained over 76,000 children. As part of our investigation into the treatment of unaccompanied children and conditions at the facilities at the border, we interviewed and provided legal services to 9,417 of them.

This report is based on these unaccompanied children’s testimonies of being detained at US detention facilities along the southern border. Children were detained in horrific conditions way beyond the 72 hours allowed under US law. Children described being held in frigid rooms, sleeping on concrete floors, being fed frozen food, with little or no access to medical care. Too often, they were subjected to emotional, verbal, and physical abuse by CBP officers.

Miami: Americans for Immigrant Justice,2020 74p.