By Donald Kerwin and Brendan Kerwin

This paper examines the staffing needs of the US Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), as it seeks to eliminate an immigration court backlog, which approached 2.5 million pending cases at the end of fiscal year (FY) 2023. A previous study by the Center for Migration Studies of New York (CMS) attributed the backlog to systemic, long-neglected problems in the broader US immigration system. This paper provides updated estimates of the number of immigration judges (IJs) and “judge teams” (IJ teams) needed to eliminate the backlog over ten and five years based on different case receipt and completion scenarios. It also introduces a data tool that will permit policymakers, administrators and researchers to make their own estimates of IJ team hiring needs based on changing case receipt and completion data. Finally, the paper outlines the pressing need for reform of the US immigration system, including a well-resourced, robust, and independent court system, particularly in light of record “encounters” of migrants at US borders in FY 2022 and 2023.

By Deborah M. Weissman, Angelina Godoy,  Havan M. Clark

Immigration enforcement has long served as an indicator of the prevailing visceral fears and loathing toward the Other. The foreign is always suspect. Foreigners in great numbers are especially suspicious. These developments are historically tied to the conventions of colonialism, expanded as a function of foreign policy, and to be sure, ideology.' By the mid-2010s, the Global South was characterized as "shithole countries,"  populated by people who were terrorists, rapists, murderers, and corrupt drug dealers. According to former President  Donald J. Trump, immigrants "aren't people. The[y] are animals, further describing them as "bad  thugs and gang members."  These representations have shaped a retributive agenda and have served to create a structure with roots in federal policies and branches in localities throughout the country through which to expel noncitizens. Deportation is a legal concept about which much has been written.' But it is more complicated. For noncitizens, forced expulsion is a lived experience occurring in time and space-an act against the body, mostly black and brown bodies. In this Article, we part ways with the well-established narratives of deportation and the punishment/non-punishment paradigm to conceive of deportation not only as a legal concept, but as a physical act-the final act-that is, the culmination of the immigration enforcement dragnet.  The physical removal of persons from the United States requires a complex system comprised of aviation networks and their various components, airports and airplanes, hangars and flight crews, and an array of physical restraints to intimidate, punish, or subdue deportees.'" We examine this infrastructure to illuminate the circumstances of expulsion and the egregious rights violations often suffered by deportees-violations that are almost always hidden from public view. Part I examines the full dimensions of deportation as a legal concept whereby courts readily admit the harms of expulsion while simultaneously deny its character as a form of punishment." The courts' construction of deportation as a nonpunitive sanction to which a range of constitutional procedural safeguards are not applicable serves to conceal the violence that occurs and distracts from the physical abuse and maltreatment associated with the final act. The legal treatment of deportation elides what, as Jacqueline Rose has written, is conveyed by "the technical term for the returning of migrants to their country of origin [that] is 'refoulement' (to push back or repulse) which also happens to be the French word for the psychoanalytic concept of repression. Part II then describes deportation as an act by which the body is seized and ultimately transported to airports and boarded onto airplanes''-sites previously not considered in the scheme of the immigration removal system's apparatus." It describes the heretofore hidden machinery of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement ("ICE") Air's network of mass deportation and further describes the perils upon removal occasioned by ICE flights.' Part III examines the "legal" trajectories of forced expulsion. It demonstrates how hostility toward immigrants has given rise to an ever-expanding deportation apparatus by which growing numbers of immigrants, including those seeking shelter from persecution, are stripped of legal protections.  It chronicles the subversion of legal processes that result in a heightened risk of wrongful deportation and thus by which immigrants reach the point of the final act of removal." It also illuminates how the ICE Air machinery, which executes deportation orders arising within an unfair system, is complicit in the various legal violations by giving effect to such orders and further curtailing whatever rights remain at the moment of the final act of deportation  Part IV takes up concerns largely unaddressed in legal scholarship: the detailing of human rights abuses on airplanes and airports-sites that function as the terminal instrumentalities of banishment. It describes the physical and psychological abuses that deportees experience during the final act of removal to demonstrate the urgency of immigrant rights advocacy at these sites. It then identifies the violations of international human rights treaties committed by the United States.25 We do so mindful that invoking human rights law in an effort to reframe the discourse occurs at a time when the question of whether these norms have any relevancy in the United States is very much at issue.  The issue of the relevancy of human rights-or lack thereof-is not a new concern, to be sure. As Jack Goldsmith stated over two decades ago, "We can now better understand how and why the United States perpetuates the double standard. The explanation is not subtle. The United States declines to embrace international human rights law because it can."  However, as Part IV argues, immigrants' rights advocates have nonetheless seized on international norms that apply locally and globally to realize an expanded vision of justice when addressing the harms wrought by ICE Air's deportation machinery. The need to call attention to U.S. exceptionalism with regard to human rights requires that scholars and activists seek their implementation as a means to encourage a discourse of hope and an expectation of realization. Stated otherwise, "all theory must end in practice or come to nothing as theory."  Part V examines airports and airplanes as sites of resistance in the context of immigration federalism debates.  We build on the literature that has called attention to the importance of political geography and immigration devolution policies to underscore the importance of new forms of local activism as a means to assert immigrant rights. Even as growing numbers of localities craft policies to protect immigrants, forming a first wave of resistance to federal anti-immigrant policies, a second wave of subnational advocacy is emerging, seeking to contest both the mechanisms by which people are drawn into the system of immigration enforcement and the institutions which detain them. It is in this context that we identify the campaigns to disrupt the aviation deportation machinery, and the importance of focusing on the local as a means to ensure accountability for individuals whose human rights have been violated. Deportation is a term frequently associated with nativist sentiment and revulsion for those who appear foreign, as well as a type of "cleansing" as consequence of aggressive annexation of territory. 4 The efforts to accelerate the removal of noncitizens from the United States has reconfigured the historic narrative about the nation's relationship with immigration and immigrants. Concerns for the humanity of immigrants requires attention to all facets of the injustices of deportation, including the sites of the final act of removal. As we demonstrate, this may be accomplished through a variety of political and legal strategies designed to call attention to the ways that deportation violates the protection of rights that exist at the very local to the very global levels of law. Notwithstanding our descriptions and analyses of innovative and important anti-deportation campaigns to mitigate the deliberate infliction of human suffering on immigrants, we do not suggest that these strategies ensure success. In the face of the deportation dragnet machine and the aviation networks that are hidden from the public, it would be presumptuous to suggest victory. What this Article offers is a way of understanding and modeling new forms of resistance at sites previously overlooked-resistance that must stand in for the protection of rights until the structures of immigration laws and processes can be humanely reset.  

Hofstra Law Review Volume 49 Issue 2 Article 5 12-1-2021, 63 pages

By Emily Ryo and Reed Humphrey

Removal proceedings are high-stakes adversarial proceedings in which immigration judges must decide whether to allow immigrants who allegedly have violated U.S. immigration laws to stay in the United States or to order them deported to their countries of origin. In these proceedings, the government trial attorneys prosecute noncitizens who often lack English fluency, economic resources, and familiarity with our legal system. Yet, most immigrants in removal proceedings do not have legal representation, as removal is considered to be a civil matter and courts have not recognized a right to government­appointed counsel for immigrants facing removal. Advocates, policymakers, and scholars have described this situation as an access-to-justice crisis or a representation crisis for immigrant communities. The prevailing wisdom suggests that the solution to this crisis is more lawyers or more nonlawyer practitioners, such as accredited representatives and legal technicians, who can provide affordable and quality legal services. The focus, therefore, has been on the ubiquity of "legal deserts," commonly defined as areas that are in shortage of lawyers, and on ways to increase the supply of legal service providers in the marketplace.

This Article presents an empirical study of legal representation that unsettles this prevailing wisdom by showing why an adequate supply of legal service providers is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition to address the representation crisis. Our study uses a new and original dataset that we compiled for the purposes of this study on immigration lawyers and non-detained immigrant respondents in removal proceedings. Our findings suggest that although the focus on the supply­side dimension of the representation crisis is important, it obscures other complex sets of barriers to obtaining legal representation that are distinct from the problem of legal deserts. Specifically, our empirical analyses show that whether a non-detained immigrant respondent obtains legal representation is predicted by where they reside, their primary language, and the size of their conational social networks, controlling for the availability of practicing immigration lawyers in close proximity to their places of residence and other potential confounders. In short, we argue that geography, language, and networks are destiny for immigrant respondents when it comes to obtaining legal representation. Thus, addressing the representation crisis requires looking beyond the problem of legal deserts to attend to a variety of other hurdles to obtaining legal representation that are associated with certain geographical, linguistic, and social isolation in which many immigrants live.

101 North Carolina Law Review 787-840 (2023), 54 pages

By Nicole Ward and Jeanne Batalova

The United States is in the midst of an historic period in its immigration history, facing a changing composition of the immigrant population, pandemic-related pent-up demand for permanent and temporary visas resulting in extensive backlogs, record pressure at the U.S.-Mexico border, and somewhat decreasing public support for expanded immigration. Legal permanent and temporary immigration rose in 2022 after a few years of chill brought about by the COVID-19 public-health crisis and the Trump administration’s restrictive policies and rhetoric. Amid crises around the world, the Biden administration extended or expanded Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for certain eligible immigrants already in the United States and announced special humanitarian parole programs allowing some migrants from several countries to enter the United States and stay temporarily. At the southwest border, record numbers of migrant encounters in 2022 accompanied court orders preventing the Biden administration from revoking the Title 42 public-health order authorizing the rapid expulsion of asylum seekers and other migrants. The administration has proposed a revised system to govern asylum at the border, but as of this writing the situation remains in flux. To promote orderly arrival and processing of asylum seekers and expedite the expulsion of unauthorized migrants, in January 2023 the Biden administration announced another humanitarian parole program to include up to 30,000 authorized newcomers from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela every month if they have a U.S. sponsor. This program was followed by controversial proposed changes to U.S. asylum system. Worldwide, the United States is home to more international migrants than any other country, and more than the next four countries—Germany, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and the United Kingdom—combined, according to the UN Population Division’s mid-2020 data. While the U.S. population represents about 5 percent of the total world population, close to 20 percent of all global migrants reside in the United States. This Spotlight offers information about the approximately 45.3 million immigrants in the United States as of 2021, by compiling the most authoritative and current data available. It provides an overview of historic immigration trends in the United States, sociodemographic information about who is immigrating, through which channels, and how many immigrants become naturalized citizens. It also provides data on the government’s enforcement actions and adjudication efforts to process visas.

Washington, DC: Migration Policy Institute, 2023. 34p.

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.

Edited by Irina Isaakyan, Anna Triandafyllidou, Simone Baglioni

Through an inter-subjective lens, this open access book investigates the initial labour market integration experiences of these migrants, refugees or asylum seekers, who are characterised by different biographies and migration/asylum trajectories. The book gives voice to the migrants and seeks to highlight their own experiences and understandings of the labour market integration process, in the first years of immigration. It adopts a critical, qualitative perspective but does not remain ethnographic. The book rather refers the migrants’ own voice and experience to their own expert knowledge of the policy and socio-economic context that is navigated. Each chapter brings into dialogue the migrant’s intersubjective experiences with the relevant policies and practices, as well as with the relevant stakeholders, whether local government, national services, civil society or migrant organisations. The book concludes with relevant critical insights as to how labour market integration is lived on the ground and on what migrants ‘do’ with labour market policies rather than on what labour market policies ‘do’ to or for migrants.

Cham: Springer, 2023. 231p.

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 James F. Hollifield

How do liberal democracies balance the need for security with their commitment to protecting the human rights of refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants? How can states coordinate migration governance while navigating asymmetries in interests and power? Decisions that address national security can seemingly come at the cost of protecting the rights of the tired, the poor, and the huddled masses. At the same time, liberal democracies must also consider the different calculi of unilateral action and multilateral cooperation.

This policy brief defines the liberal paradox in immigration and refugee policy and explains how the United States and other liberal democracies confront the dilemmas of forced displacement with respect to the competing interests of security, culture, economy, and rights. It provides recommendations on ways to improve international and regional cooperation and to address the challenges in the management of forced migration and human displacement.

Washington, DC:  Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars , 2024. 9p.

By Eleonora Celoria, and Marta Gionco

This briefing presents noteworthy practices at the national and European Union (EU) level related to safeguarding the rights of people in immigration detention and ultimately ending detention for migration purposes, by focusing on a wide range of actors spanning from civil society to national governments. It focuses on three advocacy objectives: 1. raising the visibility of detention and its harms, 2. ending the detention of children in the context of migration, and 3. implementing community-based solutions that can ultimately prevent and contribute to ending detention. The first chapter of the briefing explores civil society efforts aimed at unveiling what happens in immigration detention centres as well as the harmful impact of immigration detention itself. Ensuring that people in detention speak to the outside world and giving NGOs access to detention centres have been identified as the most important tools in this regard. It is also contended that further research, as well as litigation and advocacy, related to the right to communicate is needed. NGOs in the Netherlands and the UK have set up hotline systems to establish contact with individuals in detention, most of whom do not have access to their mobile phones. In Italy, strategic litigation has challenged the state’s denial to grant NGOs access to detention facilities. Both activities – phone communication and civil society visits - can be seen as part of a wider advocacy strategy to end immigrant detention, as exemplified by the work of civil society coalitions and organisations in Belgium, Italy and the United Kingdom, among others. The second chapter focuses on immigration detention of children, a practice which is never in the child’s best interests and should always be forbidden. While EU law still allows for immigration detention of children, there have been developments at the political and legislative levels in Germany, Belgium, France and Greece aiming at restricting the situations in which children could be detained for immigration purposes. The cases of Ireland, Italy and Spain are also explored, as these states do not generally detain children (whether they are unaccompanied or with their families). Overall, to comply with international standards and to put an end to child detention in the migration context, further efforts are needed at both the EU and national levels. The final chapter focuses on community-based solutions to prevent or end immigration detention. This section focuses in particular on the advantages of providing support through case management, which is a structured social work approach which empowers individuals to work towards case resolution (i.e., any temporary or permanent migration outcome, such as a visa, regularization scheme, re-migration or voluntary return). This section explores case studies from Belgium, Bulgaria, Poland, the UK and Italy, where case management projects are run by civil society originations, in cooperation with local (Belgium) or national (Bulgaria, Poland, UK) governments. Although each national experience is unique, the independent evaluation of these projects showed that they have some features in common: high levels of compliance of the people involved with the project, the limited numbers of migrants who have access to case management in comparison to the number of undocumented migrants, and the fact that these projects need to be accompanied by a general policy shift towards the implementation of non-coercive solutions in migration management. To conclude, this briefing analyses the practices of two countries, Ecuador and Uruguay, which are among the few states in the world that never applied or no longer resort to immigration detention.

Brussels, Belgium : PICUM – Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants, 2024. 28p.

By  Jane Linekar, Jennifer Vallentine

This paper on “children and youth in mixed migration” summarizes some key messages on the topic, and with an aim to provoke thoughts on how to address information gaps and take into account the specific dynamics, needs and vulnerabilities of children and youth travelling on mixed migration routes. The annex brings together in one resource all our research publications on children and youth.

London/Denmark: Mixed Migration Centre, 2023. 8p

By  Ana-Maria Murphy-Teixidor and Flannery Dyon

There is limited research on mixed migration in Tunisia, and there is a particular dearth of data pertaining to the experiences of migrating and displaced children and youth. To help fill this gap, this study explores the profiles, routes, and vulnerabilities of migrating and displaced children and youth in Tunisia, drawing from more than 1,500 surveys with caregivers and youth, and additional key informant interviews with children, youth, caregivers, and service providers. Through its comprehensive analysis and recommendations, this study seeks to provide a stronger evidence base for practitioners and policy makers working in child protection both in Tunisia, and along mixed migration routes to Tunisia. 

London: Mixed Migration Centre and Save the Children, 2021. 36p

By Mixed Migration Centre

Protracted conflict, instability and underdevelopment has perpetrated longstanding displacement and migration flows out of Afghanistan toward Europe. Irregular migrants from Afghanistan generally take one of two routes to Western Europe, namely the Eastern Mediterranean or the Western Balkans Route. Both of these frequently used routes expose migrants to protection risks ranging from death to physical assault to theft, perpetrated not only by irregular actors such as smugglers, but also by border forces.

London/Denmark: Mixed Migration Centre, 2023. 68p

By Ximena Canal Laiton

This paper explores the migration experiences of children and caregivers on the move in Honduras. The research project was developed by the Mixed Migration Centre (MMC), the Centro de Desarrollo Humano (CDH), and the United Nations Children‘s Fund (UNICEF) Honduras to gather evidence regarding children on the move throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. The study contains an analysis and findings on children‘s and caregivers‘ travel conditions and impacts, perceived and experienced security risks during the journey, an Honduras through the 4Mi project.d humanitarian needs identified by caregivers surveyed in

CDH, MMC, UNICEF, 2023. 15p