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 Hannah Jones , Yasmin Gunaratnam , Gargi Bhattacharyya , William Davies , Sukhwant Dhaliwal , Kirsten Forkert , Emma Jackson and Roiyah Saltus

The 2013 Go Home vans marked a turning point in government-sponsored communication designed to demonstrate control and toughness on immigration. In this study, the authors explore the effects of this toughness: on policy, public debate, pro-migrant and anti-racist activism, and on the everyday lives of people in Britain. Bringing together an authorial team of eight respected social researchers, alongside the voices of community organisations, policy makers, migrants and citizens, and with an afterword by journalist Kiri Kankhwende, this is an important intervention in one of the most heated social issues of our time."

Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2017. 204p.

By Muzaffar Chishti, Doris Meissner, Stephen Yale-Loehr, Kathleen Bush-Joseph and Christopher Levesque

With a backlog of nearly 2 million cases, the U.S. immigration court system is in crisis. Many cases now take years to adjudicate, with asylum seekers, for example, waiting four years on average for their initial hearing and longer for a final decision. Serious concerns have also been raised about the quality of court decisions.

These twin issues of caseload quantity and decision quality have wide-ranging roots, from long-standing operational challenges in the courts to new crises in the Americas that have intensified humanitarian protection needs and other migration pressures. The courts' dysfunction has had severe knock-on effects for other parts of the nation’s immigration infrastructure, including notably the immigration enforcement and asylum systems.

This report takes stock of the many challenges facing the immigration courts and outlines recommendations that would advance the goal of delivering decisions that are both timely and fair. It explores issues including court caseload and personnel levels, docket management strategies, the use of technology in the courts, and access to representation. Importantly, the report focuses on changes that can be accomplished administratively—a necessity in a time when Congress has proven itself unlikely to tackle significant immigration matters.

Washington, DC:Migration Policy Institute, 2023. 51p.

Edited by Peter Scholten Han Entzinger Rinus Penninx Stijn Verbeek

This book is the outcome of a truly European exercise. It all started in May 2008 with a conference called ‘Research-Policy Dialogues on Migration and Integration in Europe’, held at the University of Twente, organised by Peter Scholten, the first editor of this book, who was based at Twente at the time, and Rinus Penninx. This conference was co-sponsored by the IMISCOE Research Network, and some of its contributors decided to continue their joint activities in this field in a special research group under the IMISCOE umbrella. They were all intrigued by the vast differences between European countries in the use of scientific knowledge in policymaking and in the patterns of communication between academic researchers and policymakers when it comes to analysing the impact of immigration and migrant integration. Peter Scholten and Rinus Penninx invited several speakers at the Twente conference to transform their paper into a book chapter. Updated versions of these chapters are included in the present volume. In addition to this, a research proposal was developed by some of the members of the research group. The proposal primarily aimed at gathering more empirical evidence on the functioning of the research-policy nexus in the field of immigrant integration in several EU countries as well as in the EU as such. The proposal was called ‘Science-Society Dialogues on Migration and Integration in Europe’, abbreviated DIAMINT. It was accepted for funding by the Volkswagen Foundation in Hanover under its programme ‘Science, the Public and Society’. The DIAMINT project was carried out between September 2011 and September 2013, under the supervision of Han Entzinger of Erasmus University Rotterdam, and Peter Scholten, who had moved meanwhile to that university. Stijn Verbeek, also at Erasmus University, contributed significantly to both the contents and the organisation of the project. The theoretical design of the present volume as well as most of its chapters constitutes the final report of the DIAMINT project. The project, and the IMISCOE Standing Committee of which the project was part, has also produced a considerable number of journal articles and other output, of which a list appears elsewhere in this book..

IMISCOE Research Series . Cham, SWIT: Springer Nature, 2015 341p.

Edited by Michele L. Waslin, David C Brotherton, Daniel L Stageman and Shirley P Leyro

Outside Justice: Undocumented Immigrants and the Criminal Justice System fills a clear gap in the scholarly literature on the increasing conceptual overlap between popular perceptions of immigration and criminality, and its reflection in the increasing practical overlap between criminal justice and immigration control systems. Drawing on data from the United States and other nations, scholars from a range of academic disciplines examine the impact of these trends on the institutions, communities, and individuals that are experiencing them. Individual entries address criminal victimization and labor exploitation of undocumented immigrant communities, the effects of parental detention and deportation on children remaining in destination countries, relations between immigrant communities and law enforcement agencies, and the responses of law enforcement agencies to drastic changes in immigration policy, among other topics. Taken as a whole, these essays chart the ongoing progression of social forces that will determine the well-being of Western democracies throughout the 21st century. In doing so, they set forth a research agenda for reexamining and challenging the goals of converging criminal justice and immigration control policy, and raise a number of carefully considered, ethical alternatives to the contemporary policy status quo.Contemporary immigration is the focus of highly charged rhetoric and policy innovation, both attempting to define the movement of people across national borders as fundamentally an issue of criminal justice. This realignment has had profound effects on criminal justice policy and practice and immigration control alike, and raises far-reaching implications for social inclusion, labor economies, community cohesion, and a host of other areas of immediate interest to social science researchers and practitioners.

New York: Springer, 2013. 280p.

By Jane McAdam

The international protection regime for refugees and other forced migrants seems increasingly at risk as measures designed to enhance security — of borders, of people, of institutions, and of national identity — encroach upon human rights. This timely edited collection responds to some of the contemporary challenges faced by the international protection regime, with a particular focus on the human rights of those who are displaced. The book begins by assessing the impact of anti-terrorism laws on refugee status, both at the international and domestic levels, before turning to examine the function of offshore immigration control mechanisms and extraterritorial processing on asylum seekers' access to territory and entitlements — both procedural and substantive. It considers: the particular needs and rights of children, especially as forced migrants; the role of human rights law in protecting religious minorities in the context of debates about national identity; the approaches of refugee decision-makers in assessing the credibility of evidence; and the scope for an international judicial commission to provide consistent interpretative guidance on refugee law, so as to overcome — or at least diminish — the currently diverse and sometimes conflicting approaches of national courts. The last part of the book examines the status of people who benefit from 'complementary protection' — such as those who cannot be removed from a country because they face a risk of torture; cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment; or punishment — and the scope for the broader concept of the 'responsibility to protect' to address gaps in the international protection regime.

Oxford, UK: Portland, OR: Hart Publishing, 2008. 310p.

By Peter Higgins

What moral standards ought nation-states abide by when selecting immigration policies? Peter Higgins argues that immigration policies can only be judged by considering the inequalities that are produced by the institutions - such as gender, race and class - that constitute our social world.Higgins challenges conventional positions on immigration justice, including the view that states have a right to choose whatever immigration policies they like, or that all immigration restrictions ought to be eliminated and borders opened. Rather than suggesting one absolute solution, he argues that a unique set of immigration policies will be just for each country. He concludes with concrete recommendations for policy-making.

Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013. 281p.

Edited by Matthew J Gibney and Randall Hansen

Immigration and Asylum: From 1900 to the Present is an introduction to the key concepts, terms, personalities, and real-world issues associated with the surge of immigration from the beginning of the 20th century to the present. It focuses on the United States, but is also the first encyclopedic work on the subject that reflects a truly global perspective. With contributions from the world's foremost authorities on the subject, Immigration and Asylum offers nearly 200 entries organized around four themes: immigration and asylum; the major migrating groups around the world; expulsions and other forced population movements; and the politics of migration. In addition to basic entries, the work includes in-depth essays on important trends, events, and current conditions.

Santa Barbara, CA:: ABC-CLIO Press, 2005. 3vols. (1095p.)

Edited by Sergio Carrera and Elspeth Guild

While the current migration and refugee crisis is the most severe that the world has known since the end of the Second World War (with over 60 million refugees worldwide, according to the UNHCR), it may turn into the norm, because the reasons to migrate keep on multiplying. These reasons range from long-lasting political crises, endemic civil wars, atrocities committed against ethnic or religious groups by extremist organisations to the lack of economic development prospects and climate change. The European Union has a duty to welcome some of these people – namely those who need international protection. With over a million irregular migrants crossing its external borders in 2015, the European Union has to engage in a deep reflection on the rationale underpinning its policies on irregular migration and migrant smuggling – and their effects. At such a strenuous time, the challenge before us is “to work closely together in a spirit of solidarity” while the “need to secure Europe’s borders” remains an imperative, to recall President Juncker’s words. Of particular relevance in this framework is the issue of migrant smuggling, or facilitation of irregular entry, stay or transit. Addressing migrant smuggling – located at the intersection of criminal law, which sanctions organised crime, the management of migration and the protection of the fundamental rights of irregular migrants – has become a pressing priority. But the prevention of and fight against migrant smuggling is a complex process, affected by contextual factors, including a high level of economic and social disparity between the EU and several third countries, difficult cooperation with source and transit countries and limited legal migration channels to the EU

Brussels: Center for European Policy Studies (CEPS), 2016. 112p.

Edited by Paolo Cuttitta, and Tamara Last.

Causes, Dynamics and Consequences of Migration-related Mortality. A 2018 report by two non-governmental organizations (NGOs) revealed that US Border Patrol agents ‘routinely intimidate, harass, and surveil humanitarian-aid volunteers, thus impeding the administration of humanitarian aid’ along the US-Mexico border. Furthermore, they ‘stab, stomp, kick, drain, and confiscate the bottles of water that humanitarian-aid volunteers leave along known migrant routes’ (La Coalición de Derechos Humanos and No More Deaths 2018). More broadly, through the criminalization of humanitarian assistance and the ‘weaponization’ of the terrain, US authorities make themselves responsible for the suffering, death and disappearance of many people (Morgan-Olsen 2018; Osuna 2018). On the other hand, Border Patrol agents often carry out rescue operations to save migrants, which – they argue – demonstrates ‘their dedication in protecting human life’ (U.S. Customs and Border Protection 2019). They are presented as true humanitarians (Price 2018). According to US President Donald Trump, the problem of border deaths can only be solved with more border control. ‘Border Patrol needs the Wall and it will all end’ was his comment on the death of two children occurred shortly after their crossing from Mexico (Tatum 2018)

Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2019. 175p.

By Joanne van der Leun.

Processes of Incorporation of Illegal Immigrants in the Netherlands. Governmental policies on irregular or illegal immigration are notorious for their ambiguities, as even a superficial glance at public discussions on the issue in the Netherlands can illustrate. Contentions that illegal or undocumented immigrants1 are not entitled to medical care alternate with messages that everybody who needs medical treatment of any kind should receive it. Representatives of municipalities openly back local initiatives to support illegal immigrants, while at the same time the national government emphasises that illegal immigrants are utterly responsible for themselves. Public assertions that there will be no regularisation schemes in the Netherlands are followed by a series of amnesties for semi-integrated ‘white illegals’. These few out of many examples illustrate that societal reactions to illegal immigration, and the presence of unauthorised immigrants are anything but clear-cut. Officially, the political aim is to put an end to the issue by implementing a sound and coherent ‘discouragement policy’ or ontmoedigingsbeleid. Comparable sets of policy measures are introduced all over the European Union, which is frequently depicted as ‘fortress Europe’. Yet in the meantime, the presence of illegal immigrants has become a common feature of many advanced states, including those that did not perceive themselves as countries of immigration for a long time.

Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2003. 231p.

By Peter Higgins.

The title of this book signifies that immigration policy is not a matter of ethics (understood to refer to the moral analysis of individual action and character), but is rather a matter of justice, and more precisely, structural justice. A central contention of this book is that the justice of an immigration policy can be ascertained only through consideration of the pervasive, systematic, and unjust inequalities engendered by the institutions that constitute our social world. This is because immigration policies affect people not as individuals per se, but as members of social groups that are brought into existence by the ways in which formal rules, informal norms, and stable practices (that is, social institutions) unequally distribute opportunities among those implicated in them. That is to say, the way an immigration policy affects a person is not idiosyncratic, but rather is a function of that person’s gender, race, economic class, sexuality, ability, age, and citizenship status, among other things. What I am asserting here, but will argue for throughout this book, is that one cannot wholly determine whether or not an immigration policy is just in our social world, given its present nature, unless one’s principles for making such assessments treat gender, race, economic class, sexuality, and so on, as salient categories of analysis.

Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013. 281p.