Christopher Ross,

FROM THE DOCUMENT: Immigration is one of, if not the, top voting priority for 2024 American voters [1]. Both political parties are poised to increase asylum restrictions but to disparate degrees. One policy under serious consideration is mass deportation [2]. It is not a novel American immigration policy concept [3]. But introspection from previous attempts should chill the notion of mass deportation being a viable solution worthy of serious consideration. The costs would be exorbitant. It would leave large swaths of American communities decimated. The local and national economies would take serious hits. Families and loved ones would be separated. Already backlogged immigration courts would be further overwhelmed as a matter of due process. Immigration must be addressed, and the rule of law is to be respected. But solutions must equally be practical. An August 2019 immigration raid in Jackson, Mississippi where 680 immigrants were arrested while working at nearby chicken processing plants provides a window to review how mass immigration enforcement, detention, and deportation affects an American community in the 21st century. This paper provides an analysis of the immigration raid and its effects on the local community, economy, and social services. It will also provide a scaled analysis of major metropolitan areas to show the deleterious effects of mass deportation and dissuade the consideration of mass deportation as viable policy. Finally, it will propose an alternative policy that may prove to be in the best interests of all parties involved.

Center for Migration Studies. .August 6, 2024. 63p.

By JULIET P. STUMPF 

Crimmigration law—the intersection of immigration and criminal law—with its emphasis on immigration enforcement, has been central in discussions over political compromise on immigration reform. Yet crimmigration law’s singular approach to interior immigration and criminal law enforcement threatens to undermine public faith in the legitimacy of immigration law. This Article explores the significance of crimmigration for the procedural legitimacy of immigration law. Seminal scholars of psychological jurisprudence have concluded that perceptions about procedural justice—whether the law and legal authorities treat people fairly—are often more important than a favorable outcome, such as winning a case or avoiding arrest. Crimmigration introduces procedural deficiencies into immigration law that may undermine people’s perceptions of its legitimacy. These deficiencies, seen through the lens of psychological jurisprudence, mean that individuals and institutions are less likely to trust immigration law and cooperate with immigration authorities. This Article applies specific criteria that jurisprudential psychologists have shown influence perceptions about justice. It predicts that the core procedural deficiencies of crimmigration—which bar access to immigration benefits, undermine procedural safeguards for fair and accurate outcomes, and embed racialization into immigration enforcement—will undermine perceptions about the legitimacy of immigration law. This has important implications for immigration reform. If immigration enforcement lacks procedural justice, any compromise struck with crimmigration at its core will exacerbate public distrust of immigration law.

Arizona Law Review, 2023. 47p.

By Elizabeth Hannah

Immigration detention is a central feature of the United States’ immigration system. Noncitizens facing removal are detained in staggering numbers throughout the removal process, from the initiation of legal proceedings to the issuance of a final removal order. Moreover, as the U.S. government’s reliance upon immigration detention has grown, the Supreme Court has systematically stripped noncitizens of important substantive and procedural protections. This is especially true in the post-removal-order context, where a series of recent decisions have placed more people than ever at risk of prolonged detention without a bond hearing. Three cases in particular—Johnson v. Guzman Chavez (2021), Johnson v. Arteaga-Martinez (2022), and Garland v. Aleman Gonzalez (2022)—have increased the likelihood that noncitizens subject to post-removal-order detention will remain incarcerated for months or years, even if they have pending claims for relief. This Note describes each of these three cases and explains how, together, they severely undermine the rights of noncitizens with final removal orders. This Note further argues that people facing post-removal-order detention should be entitled to rigorous due process protections. Even though detention constitutes a clear deprivation of liberty, the Supreme Court has held that six months of post-removal-order detention is “presumptively reasonable.” This Note criticizes that premise and asserts that no period of immigration detention is presumptively reasonable. In other words, even if the Court had decided Guzman Chavez, Arteaga-Martinez, and Aleman Gonzalez in favor of the noncitizen plaintiffs, the existing framework would still be insufficient to protect immigrants in post-removal-order detention from experiencing protracted and unnecessary trauma. This Note therefore posits that, at minimum, immigrants with final removal orders should receive a bond hearing before an immigration judge at the close of the 90-day mandatory detention period. While more radical solutions like detention abolition are ultimately in order, a 90-day bond hearing requirement would at least provide noncitizens facing post-removal-order detention a meaningful opportunity to secure release from custody.

Arizona Law Review, 2023. 36p.

By Anastasia Karatzas

The harmful consequences of child immigration detention are, by now, increasingly well-documented. Evidence attests to the long-lasting and negative impact of the practice on children’s health, well-being and development, and has given rise to an international consensus firmly against its continued use.

However, the European Union’s policies fail to reflect any such agreement, which is evident not least in the context of the Return Directive and member states’ continued use of the practice. As it stands, the detention of minors is permitted by the Directive and remains a plausible option both according to the European Commission’s proposal to recast it and the Council of the EU’s position on the matter.

Furthermore, although the Directive mandates member states to explore all plausible alternatives and use child immigration detention only as a measure of last resort, evidence suggests that detention is prolific and other measures underused. In the recast proposal, little looks set to change on this front either, with the use of alternatives having fallen mostly by the wayside.

In this context, this paper argues that, with negotiations on the file ongoing, the time for the EU to shift gears, ban the practice, and mandate member states to implement alternatives is now opportune.

Brussels: European Policy Centre, 2022.  12p.

By Karolina Sobczak-Szelc, Marta Pachocka, Konrad Pędziwiatr, Justyna Szałańska, Monika Szulecka

This book sheds light on the complex experiences of asylum seekers and refugees in Poland, against a local backdrop of openly anti-refugee political narratives and strong opposition to sharing the responsibility for, and burden of, asylum seekers arriving in the EU. Through a multidimensional analysis, it highlights the processes of forced migrant admission, reception and integration in a key EU frontier country that has undergone a rapid migration status change from a transit to a host country. The book examines rich qualitative material drawn from interviews conducted with forced migrants with different legal statuses and with experts from public administration at the central and local levels, NGOs, and other institutions involved in migration governance in Poland. It discusses both opportunities for and limitations on forced migrants’ adaptation in the social, economic, and political dimensions, as well as their access to healthcare, education, the labour market, and social assistance. This book will be of particular interest to scholars, students, policymakers, and practitioners in migration and asylum studies, social policy, public policy, international relations, EU studies/European integration, law, economics, and sociology.

London; New York: Routledge, 2023. 256p

Edited by Kimberly Gauderman

This multidisciplinary volume brings together experienced expert witnesses and immigration attorneys to highlight best practices and strategies for giving expert testimony in asylum cases. As the scale and severity of violence in Latin America has grown in the last decade, scholars and attorneys have collaborated to defend the rights of immigrant women, children, and LGBTQ+ persons who are threatened by gender-based, sexual, and gang violence in their home countries. Researchers in anthropology, history, political science, and sociology have regularly supported the work of immigration lawyers and contributed to public debates on immigration reform, but the academy contains untapped scholarly expertise that, guided by the resources provided in this handbook, can aid asylum seekers and refugees and promote the fair adjudication of asylum claims in US courts. As the recent refugee crisis of immigrant mothers and children and unaccompanied minors has made clear, there is an urgent need for academics to work with other professionals to build a legal framework and national network that can respond effectively to this human rights crisis.

Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2023. 211p.

By Daniela Alulema and Jacquelyn Pavilon

New York City is a “welcoming city” that encourages “all New Yorkers regardless of immigration status” to access the public benefits and services for which they qualify (NYC Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs or “MOIA” 2021a). Moreover, it invests significant resources in educating immigrant communities on this core commitment and its lack of participation in federal immigration enforcement activities. However, this report by the Center for Migration Studies of New York (CMS) finds that immigrants in New York City still face significant barriers to accessing public benefits and services.

The report is based on CMS research that examined immigrant fear and other barriers in three general areas: the use of public benefits, with a particular focus on the public charge rule; the use of public health services; and access to law enforcement and the courts. The report documents how Trump-era immigration policies perpetuated fear among immigrant communities, in the context of other barriers to accessing services and benefits, and why its detrimental impacts have persisted and outlived the Trump administration.

The research included semi-structured interviews with 75 immigrants across all five boroughs of New York City and two focus groups with immigrants in both English and Spanish. The interviews documented the prevalence and impact of fear and other factors that impede (and facilitate) immigrants’ use of public benefits and services. The respondents were from 30 countries across all regions of the world and had varied legal statuses and lengths of stay in the United States. The CMS research team also interviewed 16 social service providers from community-based organizations (CBOs) and New York City agencies, including the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (NYC DOHMH) and the Human Resources Administration/Department of Social Services (HRA), and eight healthcare providers and social workers from the city’s public hospital system, NYC Health + Hospitals, who worked with immigrants across the city.

The project ran from January 2020 through October 2021, spanning most of the last year of the Trump administration and most of the first year of the Biden administration. Data collection started in November 2020 and extended through the COVID-19 vaccine rollout starting in spring 2021. The report finds that Trump-era anti-immigrant rhetoric and immigration policies, including aggressive enforcement tactics and a new rule on the public charge ground of inadmissibility, exacerbated long-standing fear pertaining to lack of status, family separation, detention, and deportation. The COVID-19 pandemic has further increased the need for services and assistance for all New Yorkers, including immigrants.

The report also finds that the change in administration, the widespread recognition of the essential work of immigrants in response to COVID-19, and the pandemic’s disproportionate impact on immigrant and minority communities did not eliminate immigrants’ fear or other barriers to accessing public benefits and protection in one of the most immigrant-welcoming communities in the country. Misinformation, language barriers, culturally-rooted concerns, and discrimination continued to impede immigrants from coming forward for needed services and benefits for which they or their family members are qualified. As one immigrant explained: Yes, I’m aware the public charge act has been rescinded by the Biden administration, but people still think it is not safe. People will tell you, ‘Yes, but you never know when [the rule could] come back.’ They say they don’t want to jeopardize their chances of bringing their children, so they want to focus on the bigger picture as opposed to some money.

The report finds that while government agencies, hospitals, and CBOs have all taken steps to minimize gaps in service provision and to mitigate immigrants’ fear, more can and should be done. It offers the following top-line findings, supplemented by additional findings in the body of the report:

The Public Charge Rule and Immigrants’ Concerns on the Use of Public Benefits

Many respondents underutilized benefits for which they were eligible due to fears pertaining to immigration status, family separation, detention, and deportation. For example, a service provider recounted a case in which a mother feared that her US citizen children would be negatively impacted in the future for having used food stamps: She’s an immigrant. It’s her husband and her, and [her] two American citizen [children]. The husband died due to COVID. When she applied [for food stamps,] she really didn’t want to apply. She was under the impression that also her kids are going to be penalized and they’re going to have to pay this back when they grow up. Because she doesn’t have any status, she was afraid. If she want[ed] to apply, she could, for the kids. … I had mentioned to her [what] the requirements [were], which [were] proof of income and address, and she said that she will get a letter from the employer, because that’s part of the requirements. When she asked for the letter, she got fired. She was just so devastated, because she was at her wit’s end. I called her, and she said, no, she didn’t want to be bothered. She was just so frustrated and devastated, and she just let it go.

Trump administration policies and rhetoric led immigrants to increase their efforts to secure a safer immigration status, including citizenship, and obtain identification documents for themselves and their children. The study found that service providers had to step out of their regular roles to provide the services that the immigrant community needed. In the midst of an unprecedented public health crisis, for example, hospital workers were also helping to fill out patients’ citizenship applications.

Context and location strongly influenced the comfort level of immigrants in sharing information which would allow them to access benefits and services. Many immigrants feared sharing identifying information in government buildings, but not as much in other settings or online.

Large numbers of respondents feared the use of public benefits, including by their US citizen children, due to misinformation about the impact of the new public charge rule on their ability and the ability of family members to secure legal status or permanent residence. Social media has made it easier to spread incomplete information or misinformation about the presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in local neighborhoods, as well as about the details of the public charge rule........

New York: Center for Migration Studies, 2022. 69p.

By James Rochlin

The near collapse of the Venezuelan economy since 2015 and the concomitant erosion of public order have led to an exodus of over seven million people by mid-2023, the largest forced migrant flow in recent Latin American history and the second largest globally after Syria. It occurs against a global backdrop of a 400 percent increase in persons displaced across borders between 2010 and 2021. Colombia hosts the largest number of Venezuelan refugees — with about 2.5 million officially recorded by the government. This has occurred during a politically tumultuous period in Colombia, which has featured the reconfiguration of competing illegal armed groups since the signing of the 2016 Peace Accord between the government and the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), a major COVID-19 outbreak in 2020–2021, and a crippling and protracted national strike in 2021.

Within the hemispheric context, Colombia serves as a stop-gap to stem the flow of Venezuelan refugees northward, roughly similar to the role played by Mexico to intercept and diminish migration to the United States. This has especially been the case since the January 5, 2023 announcement by US President Biden, which specified that refugees cannot declare asylum in the US if they attempt to cross the US border without first seeking asylum in their initial transit country. For Venezuelan refugees, the first country they enter is typically Colombia. Further, in May 2023, the Biden administration announced it was considering sending US troops to the Darien Peninsula in Panama, and will perhaps train Colombian forces, to diminish the “trafficking” of Venezuelan refugees and other refugees passing through Colombia and headed north. The result, according to leaders of NGOs and other who work directly with refugees, has been more pressure on Colombia to retain them.

The argument here is twofold. First, human security threats for Venezuelan refugees should be viewed intersectionally in the particular spaces through which they pass — from the collapse of order in their home countries (which qualifies them as refugees), through the borderlands with Colombia that pose specific threats to their safety and wellbeing, and to their destinations within Colombia that offer their own peculiar array of opportunities and human security challenges. Second, regularization programs such as the Estatuto Temporal de Protección de Migrantes Venezolanos (ETPMV) are the best way to promote human security for refugees in Colombia in the short and medium terms, but this process needs to be more inclusive.1 The first half of this paper discusses the conceptual underpinnings that link power/mobility/space to human security for refugees. The second part brings those concepts to life through interviews with an assortment of refugees.

The paper draws from a database of interviews with 72 Venezuelan refugees in Colombia in 2022 and 2023 regarding the intersectional nuances of human security. It also relies on interviews with dozens of security, migration, and human rights experts in Colombia since 1997. A unique conceptual perspective is developed regarding critical human security for Venezuelan refugees. Journal on Migration and Human SecurityVolume 11, Issue 4, December 2023, Pages 333-355

By Susan Schmidt

While gang violence, community violence, and domestic violence have been recognized as contributing factors to Central American migration, less is known about the intersection between child maltreatment and migration. This article uses secondary data from United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) interviews with unaccompanied minors from Central America and Mexico to examine child maltreatment. It provides information on the abused children, their abusers, and the questions that led to their disclosure of maltreatment. It finds that girls reported maltreatment at higher rates than boys; only girls in this sample reported sexual abuse and intimate partner violence; and boys experienced physical abuse more than any other form of maltreatment. Overall, girls experienced all forms of abuse at higher rate than boys. Fewer than half of this sample described maltreatment as an explicit reason for migration, even those who viewed it as a type of suffering, harm or danger. In addition, some disclosures suggest that childhood transitions, such as in housing, schooling, or work status, warrant further inquiry as a potential consequence of or contributor to maltreatment. The article recommends that professionals engaged with migrant children in social services, legal services, or migration protection and status adjudications should inquire about maltreatment, recognizing that children may reveal abuse in complex and indirect ways. Protection risks within the home or family environment may provide the grounds for US legal immigration protections, such as Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS) or asylum. Practitioners working with unaccompanied migrant children should use varied approaches to inquire about home country maltreatment experiences. Maltreatment may be part of the context of child migration, whether or not it is explicitly mentioned by children as a reason for migration. Policy Recommendations • US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) should update SIJS regulations to reflect changes in the law, and modify application procedures to incorporate research knowledge on the impact of trauma on children. • The US Departments of Homeland Security (DHS), Justice (DOJ), and Health and Human Services (HHS), should ensure that all children in immigration proceedings receive legal representation through public-private partnerships overseen by the HHS Office of Refugee Resettlement  (ORR). Passage of Senate Bill 3108, the Fair Day in Court for Kids Act of 2021,1 would at least guarantee legal representation for unaccompanied minors. • Codify legal standards (via USCIS regulation, or Congressional statute) for granting asylum based on gender and gender-based violence, and include standards for children and youth. • Adjudicators from USCIS, Asylum Offices, and the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) should consider new information about painful, traumatic, or shame-inducing experiences—such as child maltreatment—as part of the gradual process of disclosure, rather than negatively reflecting on the credibility of the applicant. • Federal agencies with immigration responsibilities such as USCIS, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and ORR, should be included in the federal government’s Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s (SAMHSA) Interagency Task Force for Trauma-Informed Care. These agencies should require new trainings for immigration adjudicators, including immigration judges, asylum officers, Border Patrol agents, and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) officers, on interviewing and making decisions related to children. • Legal service providers should adopt a holistic approach to service provision that includes social workers as part of the child’s legal team. 

  Journal on Migration and Human Security 2022, Vol. 10(1) 77-92  

By Michele Waslin

This article examines presidential immigration policy making through executive orders (EOs) and proclamations. Donald Trump’s overall volume of EOs has been remarkably similar to that of other presidents, while his number of proclamations has been relatively high. His immigration-related EOs and proclamations, however, diverge from those of his predecessors in several ways. Of the 56 immigration-related EOs and 64 proclamations issued since 1945, Trump has issued 10 and nine, respectively. Overall, about 1 percent of all EOs and proclamations during this period have been immigration related, compared to 8 percent of Trump’s EOs and 2.4 percent of Trump’s proclamations.

In a sharp departure from previous presidents, a greater share of his EOs and proclamations have been substantive policy-making documents intended to restrict admissions of legal immigrants and increase enforcement along the border and in the interior of the United States. This article explores Trump’s unorthodox use of executive tools to make immigration policy, circumventing Congress and even members of his own administration. It recommends that:

• Congress should hold oversight hearings and should consider revoking or modifying EOs and proclamations that have been issued pursuant to the authority provided to the president by Congress, as opposed to those based on the executive’s constitutional authority.

• Advocacy organizations should continue to challenge the president’s executive actions, the insufficient process and consultation leading to them, their statutory or constitutional justification, and their impact.

• Congress should take an inventory of the immigration authorities it has delegated, both explicitly and implicitly, to the executive branch and determine when this authority can and should be limited.

• Congress should pass legislation to update and reform the US immigration system, and thus clarify its intentions regarding US immigration law, policy, and executive authority in this area.

Journal on Migration and Human SecurityVolume 8, Issue 1, March 2020, Pages 54-67

By  Ricardo D. Martínez-Schuldt and Ricardo D. Martínez

Sanctuary jurisdictions have existed in the United States since the 1980s. They have recently reentered U.S. politics and engendered contentious debates regarding their legality and influence on public safety. Critics argue that sanctuary jurisdictions create conditions that threaten local communities by impeding federal immigration enforcement efforts. Proponents maintain that the policies improve public safety by fostering institutional trust among immigrant communities and by increasing the willingness of immigrant community members to notify the police after they are victimized. In this study, we situate expectations from the immigrant sanctuary literature within a multilevel, contextualized help-seeking framework to assess how crime-reporting behavior varies across immigrant sanctuary contexts. We find that Latinos are more likely to report violent crime victimization to law enforcement after sanctuary policies have been adopted within their metropolitan areas of residence. We argue that social policy contexts can shift the nature of help-seeking experiences and eliminate barriers that undermine crime victims’ willingness to mobilize the law. Overall, this study highlights the unique role social policy contexts can serve in structuring victims’ help-seeking decisions.

 American Sociological Review 86(1):154–85. 2021

By Rachel Feldman

This study was undertaken because generally available information about local government policy regarding inquiry about immigration status, use of this information, and interaction with federal immigration authorities was limited to a few New Mexico jurisdictions and was not upto-date or complete. The study identifies the variation and reasons for variation in these policies across the state, including the lack of any formal policy, and the function of informal policy. The study introduces the term “policy infrastructure” to refer to the function of written policy, procedure, monitoring and enforcement systems in directing local government employees and contractors, regarding their obligations to use public resources as directed by any policy that exists1 . A study assumption is that where no formal policy exists and where policy infrastructure is incomplete, public employees and contractors may use public resources at their discretion, regardless of consequences for affected persons. The problem motivating the study is the apparent situation in which residents and visitors to New Mexico experience different practices regarding the identification of and treatment related to their immigration status across the state, including within overlapping jurisdictions (e.g., city and county). Such variation in treatment raises questions regarding the extent to which immigrant rights (legal and undocumented) are respected across the state. It raises the question as to whether such variation is consistent with the intent of state and federal civil and human rights. The study was conducted between September and December in 2018, and inquiries were made by phone and formal requests for public records to all 33 counties and the 10 largest cities in the state. Contacts focused on county and city managers, sheriff and police departments and detention facilities operated by local governments. Some level of information was provided by all 33 counties and all cities contacted. A summary of results is shown in Table 1. Analysis of all documents and interview notes is provided below as study findings.   

Albuquerque, NM: ACLU of New Mexico, 2019. 51p.

By Melanie Gower, Georgina Sturge 

The Home Secretary has a duty to make a deportation order in respect of nonBritish or Irish citizens who have been convicted of an offence in the UK and sentenced to at least 12 months’ imprisonment, unless certain exceptions apply. He also has discretionary powers to deport non-British citizens if he considers it to be “conducive to the public good”. Deportation of foreign national offenders is a longstanding government priority. The Home Office considers for deportation all foreign nationals convicted of a crime in the UK and given a prison sentence. Foreign national offenders can be removed from the country before the end of their prison sentence by way of a prisoner transfer agreement, or through the Early Removal Scheme or Tariff-Expired Removal Scheme. They can receive money to help them to resettle in their home country through the Facilitated Return Scheme. As of the end of June 2023, there were at least 10,321 foreign nationals in prison in England and Wales, out of a total prison population of 85,851. Over half of foreign prisoners were European and, overall, the most common nationalities were Albanian, Polish, Romanian, Irish, and Jamaican. There were 11,769 foreign national offenders subject to deportation action living in the community, as of 30 September 2022.

A report of an inspection by the Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration published in June 2023 was critical of the Home Office’s handling of foreign national offender cases. It found that the Early Removal Scheme and the Facilitated Return Scheme were not being administered effectively. The Government says it has made good progress removing foreign national offenders from prisons and the community, pointing to a 19% increase in overall foreign national offender returns in the 12-month period to September 2023 (3,577 people). Up until that point, the number of foreign national offenders returned on an annual basis had been falling since 2016, when 6,437 individuals were returned. 

London: UK Parliament, The House of Commons Library , 2024. 11p

By United Nations Task Force on Children Deprived of Liberty

IMMIGRATION DETENTION, IS NEVER IN THE BEST INTERESTS OF THE CHILD AND CONSTITUTES A CHILD RIGHTS VIOLATION.

It is a form of violence that impacts a country’s capacity to achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, especially targets 10.7 and 16.2.4,5 All children, regardless of their legal or migratory status or that of their families, have the right to be cared for and protected from violence, abuse and exploitation. At least 77 countries have laws and policies that allow children to be detained based on their legal or migratory status, and at least 330,000 children globally per year are deprived of their liberty based on their (or their parents’) legal or migratory status.6 Lack of accurate data means this is likely to be a significant under-estimate. While many countries have committed to end child immigration detention, the reality is that even in some countries where legislation does not support immigration detention, it continues to remain in use.7 In 2022, the United Nations Task Force on Children Deprived of Liberty8,9 under the leadership of the UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence Against Children, made a joint pledge10 at the International Migration Review Forum (IMRF):

1. To conduct evidence-based advocacy and to mobilize all key stakeholders at all levels to scale up child rights-based protective solutions to end the detention of children in the context of migration.

2. To support Member States to harmonize their national legal frameworks with international human rights standards to explicitly prohibit detention of children based on their migration status or that of their families.

3. To involve and amplify the voices of migrant children in determining their best interests in all issues concerning children in legislation, policies, practices, including those related to integration, return and family reunification; as well as access to services, to justice and to remedies for violations of their rights.

4. To support data collection and the dissemination of promising practices on child rights-based protective solutions as alternative measures to end the detention of children in the context of migration.
   This advocacy brief provides an overview of promising practices and lessons learned to end child immigration detention and sets out a range of policy actions needed to scale up efforts to end this form of violence

New York: UNICEF, 2024. 15p.

By Christopher Levesque , Jack DeWaard, Linus Chan, Michele Garnett McKenzie, Kazumi Tsuchiya, Olivia Toles, Amy Lange, Kim Horner, Eric Ryu and Elizabeth Heger Boyle

Examining what we call “crimmigrating narratives,” we show that US immigration court criminalizes non-citizens, cements forms of social control, and dispenses punishment in a non-punitive legal setting. Building on theories of crimmigration and a sociology of narrative, we code, categorize, and describe third-party observations of detained immigration court hearings conducted in Fort Snelling, Minnesota, from July 2018 to June 2019. We identify and investigate structural factors of three key crimmigrating narratives in the courtroom: one based on threats (stories of the non-citizen’s criminal history and perceived danger to society), a second involving deservingness (stories of the non-citizen’s social ties, hardship, and belonging in the United States), and a third pertaining to their status as “impossible subjects” (stories rendering non-citizens “illegal,” categorically excludable, and contradictory to the law). Findings demonstrate that the courts’ prioritization of these three narratives disconnects detainees from their own socially organized experience and prevents them from fully engaging in the immigration court process. In closing, we discuss the potential implications of crimmigrating narratives for the US immigration legal system and non-citizen status.

Law & Social Inquiry , Volume 48 , Issue 2 , May 2023 , pp. 407 - 436

Legally reviewed by Miriam Domer

Though some may mistakenly believe otherwise, noncitizens (also called undocumented immigrants) have a number of legal rights in the United States. These may include the right to due process and a jury trial in certain court proceedings, the right to payment for their work, the right to defend against deportation, and many more.

People who are facing deportation or who have had their Constitutional rights violated may have legal recourse through a number of immigrant-focused resources.

Legal Rights Guide. https://www.legalfinders.com/immigrants-legal-rights-guide/ 2022. 22p.

Edited by Christine M. Jacobsen, Marry-Anne Karlsen and Shahram Khosravi  

"This edited volume approaches waiting both as a social phenomenon that proliferates in irregularised forms of migration and as an analytical perspective on migration processes and practices. Waiting as an analytical perspective offers new insights into the complex and shifting nature of processes of bordering, belonging, state power, exclusion and inclusion, and social relations in irregular migration. The chapters in this book address legal, bureaucratic, ethical, gendered, and affective dimensions of time and migration. A key concern is to develop more theoretically robust approaches to waiting in migration as constituted in and through multiple and relational temporalities. The chapters highlight how waiting is configured in specific legal, material, and socio-cultural situations, as well as how migrants encounter, incorporate, and resist temporal structures. This collection includes ethnographic and other empirically based material, as well as theorizing that cross-cut disciplinary boundaries. It will be relevant to scholars from anthropology and sociology, and others interested in temporalities, migration, borders, and power. 

New York: London: Routledge, 2021. 229p.

By John Ketchamand Daniel Di Martino   

Since the summer of 2022, more than 70,000 asylum seekers have arrived in New York City, stretching public resources to their limit. The massive influx has been particularly challenging given the city’s “right to shelter,” the result of a 1979 lawsuit, Callahan v. Carey, and corresponding consent decree, which required the city to provide immediate shelter to those who request it, regardless of the number of applicants or the availability of resources. In order to comply with this requirement, the city has housed some 40,000 migrants in shelters—which has led to an approximately 70% spike in the shelter population in a single year. NYC is currently supporting more than 170 emergency shelters and 10 additional large-scale humanitarian relief centers.

Shelters and relief centers simply cannot house all the newly arrived migrants, which has forced the city to procure approximately 4,500 hotel rooms in unionized facilities,[1] often through expensive contracts that provide bonanzas to owners and the city’s hotel-worker unions. Most notably, on May 13, Mayor Eric Adams announced that the historic 1,025-room Roosevelt Hotel, located in the heart of Midtown East, would become New York City’s central migrant intake center,[2] at a reported cost of $225 million.[3] In addition to hosting hundreds of families and individuals on-site, the location will process all arriving asylum seekers and provide them with a range of city services, including government-issued ID cards, public-school and health-insurance enrollment, mental-health counseling, and more.

New York: Manhattan Institute, 2023. 19p.

Edited by  Katarzyna Marciniak and Imogen Tyler

The last decade has witnessed a global explosion of immigrant protests, political mobilizations by irregular migrants and pro-migrant activists. This volume considers the implications of these struggles for critical understandings of citizenship and borders. Scholars, visual and performance artists, and activists explore the ways in which political activism, art, and popular culture can work to challenge the multiple forms of discrimination and injustice faced by "illegal" and displaced peoples. They focus on a wide range of topics, including desire and neo-colonial violence in film, visibility and representation, pedagogical function of protest, and the role of the arts and artists in the explosion of political protests that challenge the precarious nature of migrant life in the Global North. They also examine shifting practices of boundary making and boundary taking, changing meanings and lived experiences of citizenship, arguing for a noborder politics enacted through a "noborder scholarship. "

Albany: State University of New York Press. 2014. 320p.

By Diego Chaves-González and Carlos Echeverría-Estrada

More than 5 million Venezuelans have left their country due to the ongoing political and economic crises there. More than 4 million of these refugees and migrants have moved to other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. This has challenged receiving-country governments to rapidly rethink their policies for admitting and granting status to newcomers, and to consider how to adapt education, health-care, and other systems to support both migrants and the communities in which they settle. The COVID-19 pandemic that hit the region in early 2020 has added a further layer of complexity, as well as new risks for people on the move.

This fact sheet presents a profile of refugees and migrants travelling across 11 Latin American and Caribbean countries in 2019—Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Trinidad and Tobago, and Uruguay. The data analyzed come from the Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM), through which the International Organization for Migration (IOM) collects information about refugee and migrant demographic characteristics, labor market participation, trip details, difficulties encountered while travelling, and more.

Washington, DC: Migration Policy Institute, 2020. 31p.