Edited by Bryan Roberts , Cecilia Menjívar and Nestor P. Rodríguez

This volume focuses on recent experiences of return migration to Mexico and Central America from the United States. For most of the twentieth century, return migration to the US was a normal part of the migration process from Mexico and Central America, typically resulting in the eventual permanent settlement of migrants in the US. In recent years, however, such migration has become involuntary, as a growing proportion of return migration is taking place through formal orders of deportation. This book discusses return migration to Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, addressing different reasons for return, whether voluntary or involuntary, and highlighting the unique challenges faced by returnees to each region. Particular emphasis is placed on the lack of government and institutional policies in place for returning migrants who wish to attain work, training, or shelter in their home countries. Finally, the authors take a look at the phenomenon of migrants who can never return because they have disappeared during the migration process. Through its multinational focus, diverse thematic outlook, and use of ethnographic and survey methods, this volume provides an original contribution to the topic of return migration and broadens the scope of the literature currently available.

Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2017. 187p.

By Antje Ellermann

In this comparative study of the contemporary politics of deportation in Germany and the United States, Antje Ellermann analyzes the capacity of the liberal democratic state to control individuals within its borders. The book grapples with the question of why, in the 1990s, Germany responded to vociferous public demands for stricter immigration control by passing and implementing far-reaching policy reforms, while the United States failed to effectively respond to a comparable public mandate. Drawing on extensive field interviews, Ellermann finds that these cross-national differences reflect institutionally determined variations in socially coercive state capacity. By tracing the politics of deportation across the evolution of the policy cycle, beginning with anti-immigrant populist backlash and ending in the expulsion of migrants by deportation bureaucrats, Ellermann is also able to show that the conditions underlying state capacity systematically vary across policy stages. Whereas the ability to make socially coercive law is contingent on strong institutional linkages between the public and legislators, the capacity for implementation depends on the political insulation of bureaucrats.

Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. 214p.

Edited by Kenyon Zimmer and Cristina Salinas

In Deportation in the Americas: Histories of Exclusion and Resistance, editors Kenyon Zimmer and Cristina Salinas have compiled seven essays, adapted from the Walter Prescott Webb Memorial Lecture Series, that deeply consider deportation policy in the Americas and its global effects.

These thoughtful pieces significantly contribute to a growing historiography on deportation within immigration studies — a field that usually focuses on arriving immigrants and their adaptation. All contributors have expanded their analysis to include transnational and global histories, while recognizing that immigration policy is firmly developed within the structure of the nation-state. Thus, the authors do not abandon national peculiarity regarding immigration policy, but as Emily Pope-Obeda observes, “from its very inception, immigration restriction was developed with one eye looking outward.” Contributors note that deportation policy can signal friendship or cracks within the relationships between nations.

Rather than solely focusing on immigration policy in the abstract, the authors remain cognizant of the very real effects domestic immigration policies have on deportees and push readers to think about how the mobility and lives of individuals come to be controlled by the state, as well as the ways in which immigrants and their allies have resisted and challenged deportation. From the development of the concept of an “anchor baby” to continued policing of those who are foreign-born, Deportation in the Americas is an essential resource for understanding this critical and timely topic.

College Station, TX:Texas A&M University Press, 2018. 242p.

By Torrie Hester

Before 1882, the U.S. federal government had never formally deported anyone, but that year an act of Congress made Chinese workers the first group of immigrants eligible for deportation. Over the next forty years, lawmakers and judges expanded deportable categories to include prostitutes, anarchists, the sick, and various kinds of criminals. The history of that lengthening list shaped the policy options U.S. citizens continue to live with into the present.

Deportation covers the uncertain beginnings of American deportation policy and recounts the halting and uncoordinated steps that were taken as it emerged from piecemeal actions in Congress and courtrooms across the country to become an established national policy by the 1920s. Usually viewed from within the nation, deportation policy also plays a part in geopolitics; deportees, after all, have to be sent somewhere. Studying deportations out of the United States as well as the deportation of U.S. citizens back to the United States from abroad, Torrie Hester illustrates that U.S. policy makers were part of a global trend that saw officials from nations around the world either revise older immigrant removal policies or create new ones.

A history of immigration policy in the United States and the world, Deportation chronicles the unsystematic emergence of what has become an internationally recognized legal doctrine, the far-reaching impact of which has forever altered what it means to be an immigrant and a citizen.

Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017. 252p.

By Tanya Maria Golash-Boza

The United States currently is deporting more people than ever before: 4 million people have been deported since 1997 –twice as many as all people deported prior to 1996. There is a disturbing pattern in the population deported: 97% of deportees are sent to Latin America or the Caribbean, and 88% are men, many of whom were originally detained through the U.S. criminal justice system. Weaving together hard-hitting critique and moving first-person testimonials, Deported tells the intimate stories of people caught in an immigration law enforcement dragnet that serves the aims of global capitalism.

Tanya Golash-Boza uses the stories of 147 of these deportees to explore the racialized and gendered dimensions of mass deportation in the United States, showing how this crisis is embedded in economic restructuring, neoliberal reforms, and the disproportionate criminalization of black and Latino men. In the United States, outsourcing creates service sector jobs and more of a need for the unskilled jobs that attract immigrants looking for new opportunities, but it also leads to deindustrialization, decline in urban communities, and, consequently, heavy policing. Many immigrants are exposed to the same racial profiling and policing as native-born blacks and Latinos. Unlike the native-born, though, when immigrants enter the criminal justice system, deportation is often their only way out. Ultimately, Golash-Boza argues that deportation has become a state strategy of social control, both in the United States and in the many countries that receive deportees.

New York and London: New York University Press, 2015. 301p.

By Andreas Schloenhardt

This research report identifies, outlines, and examines criminal offences pertaining to the smuggling of migrants in the ten ASEAN Member States. The report gives insight into the legislative framework relating to the criminalisation of smuggling of migrants in Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (PDR), Malaysia, the Union of Myanmar (Myanmar), the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Viet Nam. Domestic offences are compared to the criminalisation requirements set out in the United Nations Smuggling of Migrants Protocol and the Convention against Transnational Organized Crime. Using this approach, similarities and differences to the international framework are highlighted and recommendations are developed to facilitate the accurate and comprehensive implementation of the Protocol requirements into domestic laws. Recent developments led by ASEAN to provide coordinated responses to smuggling of migrants and to facilitate cooperation and information exchange between Member States are also documented and their potential further explored. This report serves to assist ASEAN Member States in their efforts to prevent and combat the smuggling of migrants effectively, enhance international cooperation, protect the rights of smuggled migrants, and to strengthen the role of ASEAN in this field.

Bangkok, Thailand: United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Regional Office for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, 2019. 208p.

By Gordon H. Hanson

Immigration reform is one of the most divisive issues confronting U.S. policymakers. The rise in the number of illegal immigrants in the United States over the past ten years—from five to twelve million—has led to concerns about the effects of illegal immigration on wages and public finances, as well as the potential security threats posed by unauthorized entry into the country. In the past year alone, the governors of New Mexico and Arizona have declared a “state of emergency” over illegal immigration, and President Bush signed into law the Secure Fence Act, which authorizes the spending of $1.2 billion for the construction of a seven-hundred-mile fence along the U.S.-Mexico border. In this Council Special Report, Professor Gordon H. Hanson of the University of California, San Diego approaches immigration through the lens of economics.

• More...

  The results are surprising. By focusing on the economic costs and benefits of legal and illegal immigration, Professor Hanson concludes that stemming illegal immigration would likely lead to a net drain on the U.S. economy—a finding that calls into question many of the proposals to increase funding for border protection. Moreover, Hanson argues that guest worker programs now being considered by Congress fail to account for the economic incentives that drive illegal immigration, which benefits both the undocumented workers who desire to work and live in the United States and employers who want flexible, low-cost labor. Hanson makes the case that unless policymakers design a system of legal immigration that reflects the economic advantages of illegal labor, such programs will not significantly reduce illegal immigration. He concludes with guidelines crucial to any such redesign of U.S. laws and policy. In short, Professor Hanson has written a report that will challenge much of the wisdom (conventional and otherwise) on the economics behind a critical and controversial issue.

Washington, DC: Council on Foreign Relations, 2007. 52p.

By Alex Nowrasteh

Crime committed by illegal immigrants is an important public policy issue that should affect the allocation of federal immigration enforcement resources, state and local law enforcement resources, and policies toward arresting, detaining, and removing illegal immigrants.1 This brief uses Texas Department of Public Safety data to measure the rate at which individuals were convicted and arrested by crime and immigration status in Texas in 2019. This brief is an update, expansion, and improvement of earlier publications that measured criminal conviction and arrest rates by immigration status in Texas in 2015, 2017, and 2018 using the same data source. The results in this updated brief show that in Texas in 2019, illegal immigrants were 37.1 percent less likely to be convicted of a crime than native-born Americans and legal immigrants were about 57.2 percent less likely to be convicted of a crime than native-born Americans. The conviction and arrest rates for illegal immigrants were lower than those for native-born Americans but higher than those for legal immigrants. This result holds for just about every type of crime, including homicide, sex crimes, larceny, and most other crimes.

Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 2021. 7p.

By Sean Kennedy, Jason Richwine, and Steven A. Camarota

Activists and academics have been misusing data from the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) in studies claiming that illegal immigrants have relatively low crime rates. These studies do not appreciate that it can take years for Texas to identify convicts as illegal immigrants while they are in custody. As a result, the studies misclassify as native-born a significant number of offenders who are later identified as illegal immigrants.

New York: Center for immigration Studies, 2022. 5p.

By Transnational Records Access Clearinghouse

In this report, TRAC examines the growth of ATD during the first year of the Biden administration using detailed data obtained from ICE through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. These data on ICE’s ATD program are not the most current. As TRAC recently announced, by the end of September 2022 the number of people in ATD exceeded 300,000 for the first time. Nonetheless, the data in this report provide a far more detailed picture than ICE’s regular ATD releases.

Syracuse, NY: Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, 2022.

By Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, Office of the Special Representative and Co-ordinator for Combating Trafficking in Human Beings

The publication takes stock of technology tools and initiatives developed to combat trafficking in human beings in its different forms in the OSCE area and beyond. It also examines the ways technology can be misused to facilitate trafficking in human beings. It is the first known publication to conduct a global analysis of how different stakeholders, including law enforcement, civil society, businesses and academia can take advantage of technology to advance the fight against the human trafficking crime. The publication also provides recommendations to governments and organizations funding technology projects on how to maximize the value of technology-based solutions.

Vienna: Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, 2020. 78p.

By Hiroshi Motomura

In 1975, Texas adopted a law allowing school districts to bar children from public schools if they were in the United States unlawfully. The US Supreme Court responded in 1982 with a landmark decision, Plyler v. Doe, that kept open the schoolhouse doors, allowing these children to get the education that state law would have denied. The Court established a child's constitutional right to attend public elementary and secondary schools, regardless of immigration status. With Plyler, three questions emerged that have remained central to the national conversation about immigration outside the law: What does it mean to be in the country unlawfully? What is the role of state and local governments in dealing with unauthorized migration? Are unauthorized migrants "Americans in waiting?"

Today, as the United States weighs immigration reform, debates over "illegal" or "undocumented" immigrants have become more polarized than ever. In Immigration Outside the Law, acclaimed immigration law expert Hiroshi Motomura, author of the award-winning Americans in Waiting, offers a framework for understanding why these debates are so contentious. In a reasoned, lucid, and careful discussion, he explains the history of unauthorized migration, the sources of current disagreements, and points the way toward durable answers. In his refreshingly fair-minded analysis, Motomura explains the complexities of immigration outside the law for students and scholars, policy-makers looking for constructive solutions, and anyone who cares about this contentious issue.

Oxford, UK: New York: Oxford University Press, 2014 . 360p.

By Chisato Yoshida and Alan D. Woodland

This book is an extensive review of the current state of illegal immigration in Europe and North America whilst providing theoretical analysis. This analysis models illegal immigration in a two-country framework, highlights the inter-related labour markets and considers a range of immigration policy instruments, including border patrols and employer surveillance and sanctions. Distinguishing between scenarios with and without the international mobility of capital, this book also examines various profit-sharing arrangements.

Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. 201p.

By Mary Bosworth

On any given day nearly 3000 foreign national citizens are detained under immigration powers in UK detention centers alone. Around the world immigrants are routinely detained in similar conditions. The institutions charged with immigrant detention are volatile and contested sites. They are also places about which we know very little. What is their goal? How do they operate? How are they justified

Inside Immigration Detention lifts the lid on the hidden world of migrant detention, presenting the first national study of life in British immigration removal centers. Offering more than just a description of life behind bars of those men and women awaiting deportation, it uses staff and detainee testimonies to revisit key assumptions about state power and the legacies of colonialism under conditions of globalization.

Based on fieldwork conducted in six immigration removal centers (IRCs) between 2009 and 2012, it draws together a large amount of empirical data including: detainee surveys and interviews, staff interviews, observation, and detailed field notes. From this, the book explores how immigration removal centers identify their inhabitants as strangers, constructing them as unfamiliar, ambiguous and uncertain. In this endeavor, the establishments are greatly assisted by their resemblance to prisons and by familiar racialized narratives about foreigners and nationality.

However, as staff and detainee testimonies reveal, in their interactions and day-to-day life women and men find many points of commonality. Such recognition of one another reveals the goal and effect of detention to be incomplete. Denial requires effort. In order to minimize the effort it must expend, the state 'governs at distance', via the contract. It also splits itself in two, deploying some immigration staff onsite, while keeping the actual decision-makers (the caseworkers) elsewhere, sequestered from the potentially destabilizing effects of facing up to those whom they wish to remove. Such distancing, while bureaucratically effective, contributes to the uncertainty of daily life in detention, and is often the source of considerable criticism and unease. Denial and familiarity are embodied and localized activities, whose pains and contradictions are inherent in concrete relationships.

Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2014. 283p.

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.

By Kristina Beckman

Beckman applies linguistic theory to a single, actual court case. The case, U. S. v. L. Kong (CR00-0956-TUC-RCC), involves a licensed gun dealer who was charged with illegally selling weapons. His defense was that his abilities in English his first language is Chinese were not sufficient to understand some of the minor points of law. Therefore, there was no intent on his part to disobey the law and his actions were simply the result of a misunderstanding. This book examines his claim through applied forensic linguistic techniques. While a single text serves as the foundation for discussion, other representative cases are also included. Readers follow how a forensic linguist approaches a real case. Beckman's book offers a clear understanding of both the theory and practical application behind forensic linguistic research.

New York: LFB Scholarly Publishing , 2007. 212p.

By Galina Cornelisse

Practices of immigration detention in Europe are largely resistant to conventional forms of legal correction. By rethinking the notion of territorial sovereignty in modern constitutionalism, this book puts forward a solution to the problem of legally permissive immigration detention.

Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2010. 403p.

Edited by Maria João Guia, Robert Koulish, Valsamis Mitsilegas

This book offers a brand new point of view on immigration detention, pursuing a multidisciplinary approach and presenting new reflections by internationally respected experts from academic and institutional backgrounds. It offers an in-depth perspective on the immigration framework, together with the evolution of European and international political decisions on the management of immigration. Readers will be introduced to new international decisions on the protection of human rights, together with international measures concerning the detention of immigrants.

In recent years, International Law and European Law have converged to develop measures for combatting irregular immigration. Some of them include the criminalization of illegally entering a member state or illegally remaining there after legally entering. Though migration has become a great challenge for policymakers, legislators and society as a whole, we must never forget that migrants should enjoy the same human rights and legal protection as everyone else.

Cham: Springer, 2016. 293p.

By Ivan Y. Sun and Yuning Wu

This book discusses the issues surrounding race, ethnicity, and immigrant status in U.S. policing, with a special focus on immigrant groups’ perceptions of the police and factors that shape their attitudes toward the police. It focuses on the perceptions of three rapidly growing yet understudied ethnic groups – Hispanic/Latino, Chinese, and Arab Americans. Discussion of their perceptions of and experience with the police revolves around several central themes, including theoretical frameworks, historical developments, contemporary perceptions, and emerging challenges. This book appeals to those interested in or researching policing, race relations, and immigration in society, and to domestic and foreign government officials who carry law enforcement responsibilities and deal with citizens and immigrants in particular.

Palgrave, 2018. 195p.

By Brynn O'Brien

Australia sends asylum seekers to offshore camps where they are detained indefinitely and subjected to well documented abuses, in violation of their human rights.

The Australian Government outsources the operations at the camps, and Spanish company Ferrovial has responsibility for the system’s largest operational contracts, through its wholly-owned subsidiary, Broadspectrum. Investors in Ferrovial, including the Norwegian Pension Fund, are exposed to the significant risks of association with human rights abuse.

Canberra: Australia Institute, 2016. 29p.