By New York University School of Law. Immigrant Rights Clinic, Immigrant Defense Project, Families for Freedom

New York City is home to over three million foreign-born residents.1 Yet, immigrant New Yorkers have been forced to struggle with the harsh realities of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) operations in their city for years—families broken apart by midnight raids, parents of U.S. citizen children sent to far-away detention facilities in Texas and Louisiana and held without bond, immigrants arrested after a “stop-and-frisk” encounter with the NYPD, only to find themselves thrown into a pipeline that sends thousands of New Yorkers from Rikers Island to ICE detention every year. However, even as advocates, the City Council, and other city stakeholders debate how to limit the damage that ICE policies inflict on New York and the city’s large immigrant community, there has been little data on what exactly happens to immigrant New Yorkers who are apprehended by ICE, and the extent of the agency’s enforcement operations in the city. In response to this urgent need for information, the community groups Families for Freedom and the Immigrant Defense Project filed a request for information with ICE under the Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”). The agency initially did not comply with the request, instead stating that the organizations needed to pay over $1.3 million in fees to secure the necessary documents.2

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  The organizations filed a lawsuit in federal district court against ICE, and the case was settled in May of 2011. As a condition of the settlement, ICE provided data to the Vera Institute for Justice, for use in conjunction with immigration court data for a wide-ranging study on immigrant New Yorkers’ access to counsel. That study was released in early 2012.3 ICE also provided a spreadsheet of data on every individual apprehended by the New York City Field Office from October 2005 through December 2010. Nineteen distinct data fields were included for each individual apprehended, and that never before released data is the subject of this report. The data provided by ICE, as a condition of the settlement of the lawsuit, is significant in two key ways. First, it allowed researchers at the Vera Institute to accurately assess the impact of detention and, in particular, ICE’s transfer policy, on the issues that face immigrant New Yorkers in immigration court, such as access to legal counsel and the availability of relief from deportation.4 Second, the spreadsheet provided by ICE that is the basis of this report provides hard evidence of the effects of immigration detention and deportation on New York City communities. For example, there had previously been no way for local leaders and community members to assess how many individuals of a certain nationality were detained by ICE in New York or how many individuals in a given New York City zip code or neighborhood were detained. Likewise, there was no way for them to know how many parents of U.S. citizen children were swept into the system. Other issues, like the frequency of bond settings for New Yorkers and ICE transfers of New Yorkers to far-away detention facilities, remained equally murky. However, while the data is in many respects new, it only confirms what groups like Families for Freedom and the Immigrant Defense Project have known for years: that ICE enforcement in New York City is terrorizing the city’s immigrant community.

New York: NYU School of Law Immigrant Rights Clinic, Immigrant Defense Project, Families for Freedom, 2012. 29p.

By Harvard Law School’s Fair Punishment Project, the Immigrant Defense Project, and the Immigrant Legal Resource Center

Local criminal justice policies, such as vagrancy laws and cash bail requirements, endanger vulnerable immigrant populations and undercut the promise of “sanctuary” cities, according to a report released today by Harvard Law School’s Fair Punishment Project, the Immigrant Defense Project, and the Immigrant Legal Resource Center. The report urges city and county leaders who want to protect immigrants to act swiftly to end harmful criminal justice practices that criminalize poverty and send undocumented residents into the deportation pipeline.

Washington, DC: ILRC, 2017. 35p.

By The National immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild, Immigrant Defence Project, and Mijente

Tech is transforming immigration enforcement. As advocates have known for some time, the immigration and criminal justice systems have powerful allies in Silicon Valley and Congress, with technology companies playing an increasingly central role in facilitating the expansion and acceleration of arrests, detentions, and deportations. What is less known outside of Silicon Valley is the long history of the technology industry’s “revolving door” relationship with federal agencies, how the technology industry and its products and services are now actually circumventing city- and state-level protections for vulnerable communities, and what we can do to expose and hold these actors accountable. Mijente, the National Immigration Project, and the Immigrant Defense Project — immigration and Latinx-focused organizations working at the intersection of new technology, policing, and immigration — commissioned Empower LLC to undertake critical research about the multi-layered technology infrastructure behind the accelerated and expansive immigration enforcement we’re seeing today, and the companies that are behind it. The report opens a window into the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) plans for immigration policing through a scheme of tech and database policing, the mass scale and scope of the tech-based systems, the contracts that support it, and the connections between Washington, D.C., and Silicon Valley. It surveys and investigates the key contracts that technology companies have with DHS, particularly within Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and their success in signing new contracts through intensive and expensive lobbying.

Washington, DC: National Immigration Project, 2018. 74p.

By Steve Cohen

This book is a searing critique of today's immigration systems. Former barrister Steve Cohen declares that these systems are deeply flawed, and takes a fresh look at the ethical and political problems that surround this controversial subject. Cohen proposes that current immigration controls are so inherently racist and irrational that they require the creative dystopian ideas contained within George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four" to adequately describe them. He seeks to understand the irrationality of these controls - complete with their own brand of newspeak, doublethink, memory holes and thought police - and undertakes an incisive critique of immigration controls, revealing the nightmare world in which refugees, migrants and immigrants find themselves. The book also scrutinizes the latest developments in UK immigration legislation and compares and contrasts the UK experience with that of other countries. "Deportation is Freedom!" is a lively yet thought-provoking read that will captivate anyone who cares about the immigration systems that are shaping our world today. It will be of particular interest to social workers, lawyers, social policy makers and all people politically engaged in immigration campaigning.

London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2016. 224p.

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.

Edited by Steven J Gold and Stephanie J Nawyn

This revised and expanded second edition of Routledge International Handbook of Migration Studies provides a comprehensive basis for understanding the complexity and patterns of international migration. Despite increased efforts to limit its size and consequences, migration has wide-ranging impacts upon social, environmental, economic, political and cultural life in countries of origin and settlement. Such transformations impact not only those who are migrating, but those who are left behind, as well as those who live in the areas where migrants settle.

Featuring forty-six essays written by leading international and multidisciplinary scholars, this new edition showcases evolving research and theorizing around refugees and forced migrants, new migration paths through Central Asia and the Middle East, the condition of statelessness and South to South migration. New chapters also address immigrant labor and entrepreneurship, skilled migration, ethnic succession, contract labor and informal economies. Uniquely among texts in the subject area, the Handbook provides a six-chapter compendium of methodologies for studying international migration and its impacts.

London; New York: Routledge, 2019. 655p.

Edited by Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, Gil Loescher, Katy Long and Nando Sigona

This Handbook critically traces the birth and development of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies, and vividly illustrates the vibrant and engaging debates that characterize this rapidly expanding field of research and practice. The contributions highlight the key challenges faced by academics and practitioners working with and for forcibly displaced populations around the world, as well as identifying new directions for research in the field. Since emerging as a distinct field of study in the early 1980s, Refugee and Forced Migration Studies has grown from being of concern of a relatively small number of scholars and policy analysts to become a global field with thousands of students worldwide studying displacement, either from traditional disciplinary perspectives or as a core component of newer interdisciplinary programmes across the Humanities and Social and Political Sciences. Today the field encompasses both rigorous academic research as well as action-research focused on advocating in favour of refugees’ needs and rights and more directly concerned with influencing policy and practice. The Handbook’s fifty-two state-of-the-art chapters, written by leading academics, practitioners, and policymakers working in universities, research centres, think tanks, NGOs, and international organizations across every continent, provide a comprehensive and cutting-edge overview of the key intellectual, political, social, and institutional challenges arising from mass displacement in the world today.

Oxford, UK; New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. 800p.

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 Theodore Baird

Human smuggling is a global phenomenon which has been difficult to research. Even though there is a large and growing literature on human smuggling, the literature lacks a systematic review of the major theoretical and conceptual approaches. This literature review is organized with the purpose of clarifying and understanding the diversity of theoretical approaches used in the study of migrant smuggling. Six separate theoretical approaches are identified and discussed: 1) organizational or network approaches, partially based on criminological models; 2) mode of crossing and likelihood of capture models, including estimations of migration rates and flows; 3) migration industry and market approaches; 4) global historical comparisons; 5) human rights responses which are concerned with legal arguments; and 6) gender approaches. The review concludes with suggestions for future research.

Copenhagen: Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS) , 2013. 29p.

By United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)

In April 2015, the UNODC Regional Office for Southeast Asia and the Pacific released the report Migrant Smuggling in Asia (Volume I), the result of an intensive effort to collect and share data and information on migrant smuggling spanning 28 States and territories in the Asia region. This new report, Migrant Smuggling in Asia and the Pacific (Volume II) builds on that work. Covering 40 States and territories, it expands upon the geographical scope of the previous report to include the Pacific and gives an updated overview of migrant smuggling in the region as a whole.

Bangkok, Thailand: UNODC, Regional Office for Southeast Asia and the Pacific , 2018. 339p.

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 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 Santadarshan Sadhu, Kareem Kysia, Letitia Onyango, Clifford Zinnes, Sarah Lord, Alexandre Monnard, and Ingrid Rojas Arellano

In 2010, in response to evidence of children working under hazardous conditions in the West African cocoa sector, the Governments of Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, representatives from the International Chocolate and Cocoa Industry (Industry), and the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) signed a Declaration and Framework tied to the Harkin-Engel Protocol, under which Industry publicly acknowledged child labor in the cocoa sector and committed to take steps to address it. In the signing of the Declaration and Framework, these partners committed to take action to reduce child labor and the worst forms of child labor (WFCL) in cocoa production towards the goal of achieving a 70 percent reduction in the WFCL in the cocoa sectors of the two countries in the aggregate by 2020. The Child Labor Cocoa Coordinating Group (CLCCG) was established to coordinate efforts among the partners working under the Declaration and Framework. The Framework lays out multiple goals to support implementation of the Declaration and further the aims of the original Protocol. Among those goals was the continuation of nationally representative child labor surveys, recurring at least every 5 years. The aim of the surveys was to provide comparable data for ongoing assessments of child labor prevalence in cocoa growing areas of Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana and included a commitment to make publicly available the related survey methodologies, data, and reports based on the findings of these surveys. Under this goal, surveys were carried out by Tulane University during the 2008/09 and 2013/14 cocoa harvest seasons in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana. In 2016, NORC at the University of Chicago (NORC) was awarded a four-year cooperative agreement by the USDOL Bureau of International Labor Affairs 1 (ILAB) to implement the 2018/2019 Assessing Progress in Reducing Child Labor in Cocoa Production in Cocoa Growing Areas of Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana project.

Chicago: NORC at the University of Chicago. 2020. 301p.