By Taylor Koehler

Throughout the last decade, international human rights experts and monitoring bodies have expressed deep concern over States’ increased use of immigration detention. A primary reason for this concern is that States regularly impose immigration detention arbitrarily, and in so doing, render detained persons more vulnerable to violations of the prohibition on torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment. As U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer explained in his 2018 report to the U.N. Security Council on migration-related torture and ill-treatment: “While not every case of arbitrary detention will automatically amount to torture or ill-treatment, there is an undeniable link between both prohibitions … experience shows that any form of arbitrary detention exposes migrants to increased risks of torture and ill-treatment.” While considerable analysis of components of the immigration detention system in the U.S. under international law, particularly the prohibition on torture and other ill treatment, have been completed, there have been few attempts to bring all these different analyses together to look at the U.S. immigration system as a complete whole. This backgrounder, and the more in-depth legal analysis on which it is based (linked above), attempt to fill this gap. The report analyzes the U.N. Convention against Torture and Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment and Punishment (Convention against Torture) and other international and regional legal authorities. It draws on CVT’s decades-long clinical experience providing care to survivors of torture, including formerly detained asylum seekers, and highlights reports of wide-ranging abuses at immigration detention centers such as Stewart and Irwin County Detention Centers, located in Georgia where CVT has operated a survivor of torture program for the past five years. The report ultimately concludes both that the system is arbitrary and that U.S. immigration detention systematically exposes detained migrants to violations of the prohibition on torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment. Indeed, it finds that the current system’s defects are structural and pervasive to a degree that the system must be phased out entirely to bring the United States into compliance with its international legal obligations.

Center for Victims of Torture, 2021. 21p

By Karen Musalo, Anna Law, Annie Daher, and Katharine Donato

Immigration judges (IJs), housed within the Executive Office for Immigration Review within the Department of Justice (DOJ), make decisions in asylum and withholding claims, which are life or death matters. And although their title is “judge,” IJs are DOJ attorneys who lack independence and are particularly susceptible to political pressures. Federal court judges and scholars alike have criticized the quality and fairness of IJ decision-making, and many studies have been carried out to better understand the factors that impact it. The prior studies have relied principally on quantitative data because IJ decisions are not publicly available or searchable in any existing database. The authors of this study had unprecedented access to more than five hundred IJ decisions, allowing for both a quantitative and qualitative analysis. Our findings were consistent with other studies in noting that IJ experience and gender made a difference in case outcomes, with male IJs and IJs with enforcement backgrounds denying protection at higher rates. We were able to identify other significant trends as well, including that the most common reasons why IJs denied protection to credible asylum seekers were their findings that they failed to meet the extremely stringent requirements of two elements of the refugee definition elements which arguably are overly restrictive and inconsistent with international norms. We also observed patterns of incompetence and bias among these decisions.

This Article recommends several policy reforms to address the shortcomings we identify, among them: (1) the creation of Article I immigration courts, (2) improvement of IJ competence through more stringent hiring standards and continuing education, (3) increased diversity of IJs based on employment experience, (4) reduced deference to the Board of Immigration Appeals in reviewing cases, and (5) allocating additional resources to immigration adjudication.

Boston College Law Review [Vol. 65:2743], 2024, 58p.

By Elana Fogel, Kate Evans

Traffic stops are the most common form of police-initiated contact with members of the public. The sheer volume of traffic stops combined with their use as a pretext to surveil Black and Latiné communities has generated substantial scholarship and movements for police reform. Yet this commentary assumes that the subjects of traffic stops are U.S. citizens. At the same time, scholarship on the intersection of criminal and immigration law and the convergence of their enforcement methods focuses on traffic stops as the immediate entry point for removal proceedings. This Article addresses the gap in literature by describing the experience of noncitizens who endure frequent traffic stops that result in neither immediate criminal nor immigration proceedings but nonetheless produce significant legal and nonlegal consequences-consequences that are likely to grow under a second Trump administration.

This Article frames the experience of traffic stops for noncitizens as a form of "slow deportation." It describes how the use of traffic stops to police noncitizens extends the system of racialized social control to immigrant communities with the effect of surveilling both race and status. It surveys scholarship across disciplines, racial categories, and citizenship status and uses our clients' stories to map the cumulative, compounding, and subterranean harms of traffic stops that culminate in the emotional, social, and sometimes legal exclusion of noncitizens and families. The Article concludes by proposing new approaches to counseling, policy reform, and coalition building informed by the lens of slow deportation.

Duke Law School Public Law & Legal Theory Series No. 2025-18,

By David J. Bier

America traditionally had few immigration restrictions, but since the 1920s, the law has banned most aspiring immigrants. Today, fewer than 1 percent of people who want to move permanently to the United States can do so legally. Immigrants cannot simply get an exception to immigrate any more than restaurateurs in the 1920s could simply get an exception to sell alcohol. Instead, just as Prohibition granted only a few exemptions for religious, industrial, or medical uses of alcohol, people seeking an exception to immigration prohibition must also fit into preexisting carve-outs for a select few. Many Americans have the false impression that these carve-outs are realistic options for potential immigrants to join American society, but the government’s restrictive criteria render the legal paths available only in the most extreme cases. Even when someone qualifies, annual immigration caps greatly delay and, more frequently, eliminate the immigrant’s only

chance to come to the United States. Legal immigration is less like waiting in line and more like winning the lottery: it happens, but it is so rare that it is irrational to expect it in any individual case. This study provides a uniquely comprehensive, jargon-free explanation of U.S. rules for legal permanent immigration. Some steps are simple and reasonable, but most steps serve only as unjustified obstacles to immigrating legally. For some immigrants, this restrictive system sends them into the black market of illegal immigration. For others, it sends them to other countries, where they contribute to the quality of life in their new homes. And for still others, it requires them to remain in their homeland, often underemployed and sometimes in danger. Whatever the outcome, the system punishes both the prospective immigrants and Americans who would associate, contract, and trade with them. Congress and the administration can do better, and this paper explains how.

Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 2023. 88p.

By Eric P. Baumer, Min Xie

Research Summary

Our understanding of how immigration enforcement impacts crime has been informed exclusively by data from police crime statistics. This study complements existing research by using longitudinal multilevel data from the National Crime Victimization Survey for 2005–2014 to simultaneously assess the impact of the three predominant immigration policies that have been implemented in local communities. The results indicate that the activation of Secure Communities and 287(g) task force agreements significantly increased violent victimization risk among Latinos, whereas they showed no evident impact on victimization risk among non-Latino Whites and Blacks. The activation of 287(g) jail enforcement agreements and anti-detainer policies had no significant impact on violent victimization risk during the period.

Policy Implications

Contrary to their stated purpose of enhancing public safety, our results show that the Secure Communities program and 287(g) task force agreements did not reduce crime, but instead eroded security in U.S. communities by increasing the likelihood that Latinos experienced violent victimization. These results support the Federal government's ending of 287(g) task force agreements and its more recent move to end the Secure Communities program. Additionally, the results of our study add to the evidence challenging claims that anti-detainer policies pose a threat to violence risk.

Criminology & Public Policy, 22, 417–455. 2023, 39p.

By Christian Ambrosius and David A. Leblang

The forced return of migrants is an important part of migration policy toolkits. An increased risk of deportation, politicians argue, will deter subsequent irregular migration. We explore this argument for the case of forced removals from the United States and find that rather than operating as a deterrent for future migrants, this policy had a boomerang effect. The forced return of migrants with a track record of crime generated negative externalities in the form of higher violence in their countries of origin, counteracting the deterrence effect of higher deportation risk. We apply mediation analysis to a panel of Latin American and Caribbean countries and decompose the effect of deportations on emigration into three coef­fi­cients of interest: a total effect of deportations on later emigration, an effect of deportations on the mediator variable of violence, and an effect of violence on emigration. We address the endogeneity of our key explanatory variables—deportations and violence—using migrants’ exposure to the unequal and staggered implementation of policies intended to facilitate deportations at the level of U.S. states as a source of exogenous variation. We show that migration intentions and asylum requests increase in response to deportation threats. This effect is mediated through increased violence and is strongly driven by dynamics in Central America. Although the total number of apprehensions at the U.S. southern border in response to deportation threats does not show a clear pattern, we observe an increase in the share of unaccompanied minors and the share of entire family units among those apprehended, suggesting a shift in migration strategies and composition.

Demography (2025) 62(2):419–439 DOI 10.1215/00703370-11863789 © 2025

By Silvia Carta

In 2024, PICUM’s media monitoring confirmed a growing trend: at least 142 individuals faced criminal or administrative proceedings for acting in solidarity with migrants in the EU. Additionally, our media monitoring found that at least 91 migrants were subjected to criminalisation, mostly under counter-smuggling legislation. But we know that this number is an undercount, as other organisations recorded many more cases1 in their own work. Furthermore, news articles highlighted several forms of non-judicial harassment directed at human rights defenders and civil society organisations within the EU. Due to the significant gap in statistical and official public data2 regarding individuals accused, charged, or convicted for smuggling and related offenses, this briefing relies on a media alert system and desk research, which may not comprehensively capture all relevant incidents reported across EU countries. Consequently, the figures presented likely underestimate the true extent of such occurrences. In addition, it is likely that many cases, particularly regarding people who are migrants, go unreported by the media.3 Beyond the continuously high number of people who have been criminalised in 2024, this report highlights different trends. Under the current legal system, charges of facilitation and smuggling can be used to criminalise migrants or people without regular residence and those acting in solidarity with them. Despite numerous and protracted judicial proceedings, actual convictions remain low. This report also looks at the several cases of people and organisations across Europe that have experienced non-judicial harassment. Moreover, the findings of our media monitoring in 2024 seek to shed light on the criminalisation of people crossing borders irregularly, which has grown of at least 20% in comparison to monitoring in 2023,4 but remains a relatively hidden phenomenon. A comparison between PICUM’s findings and existing research reveals a tendency for the media to underreport the criminalisation of migrants.5 Yet, the majority of cases analysed by PICUM align with research indicating that migrants, including children, often face unfounded accusations, endure harsh legal processes and face years of pre-trial detention for the sole fact of migrating   

Brussels: PICUM, 2025. 29p.

By Maricela Sanchez

In 2023, we worked with local partners and a brave set of detained leaders to create the California Immigration Detention Database (“Database”). The purpose of the Database was to expose and document the daily conditions of life in California immigration detention by tracking formal grievances sent to us by those inside. “When people try to be heard by staff through their grievances, [they] are ignored. These facilities are not safe, and staff are not held responsible for misconduct.” – Jose Ruben Hernandez Gomez Since the inception of this project, detained immigrants in California have launched widespread labor strikes and hunger strikes and have filed multiple lawsuits and administrative complaints to put a spotlight on the abuse and neglect they suffer. As part of this effort, people in custody have continued to send us copies of the grievances they file through Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (“ICE’s”) internal system. As of July 2024, we have received 485 grievances across six immigration detention facilities in California. Together, these grievances reveal a persistent and disturbing pattern of abuse that pervades ICE’s detention regime in California. • Hazardous Facilities and Inhumane Treatment: Inadequate facility management was the most common reason for a grievance, making clear that ICE’s immigration detention facilities in California are consistently unfit for human habitation. ICE also fails to meet the minimum standards of its own policies, like ensuring people have edible food, clean water, and the opportunity to go outside for fresh air and sunshine • Medical neglect: We have received 94 grievances related to inadequate medical care, lack of COVID-19 protections, and denial of medication. Many people in the detention facilities suffer from chronic conditions. Some develop new health problems, sometimes because of hazardous materials or abusive treatment they experience while detained. But requests to see a doctor are left languishing, and ICE and facility staff regularly leave medication unfilled, or otherwise disregard the prescribed treatment. Likewise, during the pandemic, ICE showed a remarkable indifference to the safety of the people it incarcerates. More recently, ICE has withheld potentially life saving treatments, like Paxlovid, from people who contract COVID. • Retaliation: The most common outcome of filing a grievance isn’t change. It’s retaliation. The grievances we’ve received include 56 complaints of bullying and harassment by detention facility staff, 13 complaints related to sexual assault, 15 complaints related to sleep deprivation, and 59 complaints related to other forms of retaliation, such as punitive and extended use of solitary confinement. As part of its regular practice, ICE does not proactively release information about the grievances it receives from people in detention. Based on our conversations with detained people and with local partners who regularly engage in detention-related work, we believe that our records represent the most consistent issues in the detention facilities. This report is intended to support the advocacy and resistance of the people trapped inside ICE’s detention facilities. It includes data, stories, and background that document the ongoing harms of immigration detention. Taken together, it is unequivocally clear that ICE and the private companies it contracts with cannot be trusted to care for the people they detain. The grievance system, which is supposed to offer an avenue for redress, ends up making things worse for those it’s intended to help. Existing oversight mechanisms are inadequate, and human rights violations are rampant. It is our conclusion that the immigration detention system is irredeemable and infected by greed, racism, and impunity

San Francisco: UCLA of Northern California, 2024. 34p.

By Sana Singh

For years, countless immigrant Californians have been calling attention to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s (CDCR) discriminatory practices that assist in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) deportation efforts. CDCR staff identify individuals in their custody, whom CDCR assumes to be born outside of the U.S., report them to ICE, and deny them valuable rehabilitation, education, and credit-earning opportunities. In 2022, the ACLU of Northern California filed a major public records request seeking communications between CDCR and ICE. Over the past several months, the ACLU of Northern California, Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Asian Law Caucus, Asian Prisoner Support Committee, and Root & Rebound have analyzed over 2,500 CDCR records and emails between August and September 2022. Step by step, the team pieced together a more detailed view than ever before into how CDCR voluntarily goes to horrifying lengths to illegally discriminate against Californians born outside the U.S. and against anyone CDCR officers unilaterally perceive or assume to be born outside the U.S. Dozens of previously unseen emails show how California’s largest public agency is using public resources to operate a system of double punishment that rips apart immigrant and refugee families and communities, in direct conflict with California’s values of equality, fairness, and justice. In their zeal to collude with ICE, CDCR is not only targeting people who have served their time and are set to return home for detention and deportation but is also sweeping up U.S. citizens and Green Card holders, relying on racist assumptions and ignoring their own records. CDCR’s practices are also increasingly out of step with the rest of California and statewide officials’ own commitments to their constituents. Many counties across California, including Los Angeles, San Joaquin, Santa Cruz, Humboldt, San Francisco, San Mateo, and Santa Clara, have already stopped facilitating transfers of people to ICE after they have served their time in jail or prison. Governor Newsom has recently called on California to “be in the homecoming business,” and CDCR Secretary Macomber has stated his intentions to “create a space focused on preparing individuals for successful returns to the community.” CDCR’s practices raise urgent legal and policy questions and implicate the fundamental rights of numerous Californians in CDCR custody, adding further to the agency’s deeply troubling record of medical abuse and neglect, warehousing of people in long-term solitary confinement, racist and antisemitic social media comments, and forced sterilizations, among other concerning practices. The human costs of CDCR’s collusion with ICE are severe, as revealed in disturbing email records in the report that follows. By proactively offering people up to ICE, CDCR has engineered a two-tiered system of justice that brings trauma to those in their custody The emails reviewed by the investigative team and described below are communications from August and September 2022. Despite the narrow timeframe of these records, the records we have received paint a disturbing picture. In just the two months the below communications span, CDCR transferred over 200 people from CDCR facilities to ICE custody. What follows is a description of the practices that CDCR uses to collude with ICE, and examples of discrimination, indiscretion, resource mismanagement, and anti-immigrant behavior by department staff, as revealed in disturbing email records. We conclude with a summary of the harms caused and the need for legislative action. and to their loved ones. The impact of such discriminatory practices is felt widely in California, which is home to the largest immigrant population in the country. In 2021, over a quarter of Californians were foreign-born and almost half of the children in the state had at least one immigrant parent. In 2023, California lawmakers can take immediate action to hold CDCR accountable to the state’s values and laws. AB 1306 authored by Assemblymember Wendy Carrillo, otherwise known as the HOME Act, harmonizes state immigration policy with existing, broadly-supported criminal justice reforms, ensuring immigrant Californians who earn their release from state prison through these measures are not transferred to ICE. The legislation offers a simple fix to one form of CDCR’s discrimination against immigrants and refugees and takes important strides toward enacting equal treatment for all who call California home

San Francisco: ACLU of Northern California, 2023. 22p.

By Emmanuel Arthur - Ewusie

Ghana's child street crime is a complicated issue that calls for striking a careful balance between protecting national security, respecting human rights, and applying the law. The term "streetism" describes the situation where children live and labor on the streets, frequently without access to basic supplies and at risk from different sources. To address the underlying causes of streetism, safeguard vulnerable children, and maintain social well-being, it is imperative to strike a balance between these objectives. The basic idea of human rights is at the center of the problem. Every child is entitled to education, a secure and supportive home, and defense against abuse and exploitation. But these rights are frequently violated by child streetism in Ghana, where children are put at risk of exploitation, abuse, and neglect. As a result, the protection and realization of children's rights must be given top priority in any strategy to combat streetism, and this strategy should be informed by both Ghanaian law and international human rights norms. Regarding child streetism, criminal law is also very important. It's important to distinguish between criminal behavior and the circumstances that lead to streetism, even though some youngsters may participate in criminal activity while living on the streets. Penalties by themselves may worsen the cycle of poverty and vulnerability and are insufficient to address the root causes of streetism. Instead, social initiatives that deal with family dissolution, poverty, and limited access to healthcare and education should be used in conjunction with criminal law enforcement. In addition, when tackling child streetism, national security implications are considered. Streetism has the potential to worsen social unrest and jeopardize public safety, especially in cities where a high proportion of youngsters live on the streets. Thus, combating streetism involves preserving community stability and security in addition to upholding individual rights. But rather than using punitive tactics, security measures must be put into place in a way that upholds human rights and encourages long-term solutions. This essay aims to present a thorough examination of youth street crime in Ghana, looking at its effects on national security, criminal law enforcement, and human rights. It attempts to contribute to a fuller knowledge of the complex issues faced by child streetism and to inform evidence-based methods for addressing this important issue in Ghana by examining legal frameworks, policy responses, and grassroot activities. In Ghana, the issue of children living and working on the streets creates difficult problems where criminal law, national security, and human rights intersect. This study looks at the causes, prevalence, and effects of child street behavior, considering how it affects children's rights and welfare, the application of the law, and maintaining national security. The research investigates legislative frameworks, policy responses, and grassroots activities targeted at resolving child streetism in Ghana using a multidisciplinary analysis. Additionally, it assesses the efficacy of the current strategies and makes recommendations for a fair and rights-based strategy that puts the child's best interests first while maintaining public safety and security.

Unpublished Paper 2024. 19p.

 By Goroga Oabile  and · France Maphosa 

For a long time, universities applied the principle of in loco parentis, when dealing with issues relating to students’ welfare on campus, including the provision of security. Standing in the place of parents, universities could decide on issues that affected students without consulting them. However, students are increasingly demanding their rights as adults, including the right to be consulted in decisions that affect them. The students’ demand for their rights has, however, often militated against universities’ efforts to provide security on campus which they are mandated to do. Using a sample of 60 students from the University of Botswana, selected through the purposive cluster sampling method, this study found that the most important demand for students is to be consulted when decisions that afect them are being made including decisions on. Students are prepared to relinquish some of their rights in exchange for their security if consulted. However, the primary responsibility for providing security on campus is for university authorities. 

Security Journal, 2025, 20p.

By Elina Treyger, Maya Buenaventura, Ian Mitch, Laura Bellows, John S. Hollywood

Between 2020 and 2024, increasing volumes of aliens sought entry at the southwest U.S. border without valid entry documents. Several policies adopted since 2020 have sought to incentivize aliens — particularly those who have intentions of seeking asylum — to present themselves at ports of entry (POEs) and disincentivize crossing unlawfully between POEs. These trends and policies raise a question of the capacity of U.S. Customs and Border Protection's (CBP's) Office of Field Operations (OFO) to process such aliens and unaccompanied alien children (UACs) through POEs. A congressional request sought an analysis that could shed light on whether and how well OFO would be able to process increased volumes and the resources it would need to do so. This report is the result of that analysis.

Key Findings

There are multiple pathways for processing likely asylum seekers and UACs through POEs. This is a function of several factors, such as whether the alien arrives with a CBP One appointment; whether they are a member of a family unit, a UAC, or a single adult; whether derogatory information is discovered about the alien; and detention facility capacity.

OFO's capacity to process this population varies across time and POEs and is constrained by a mix of individual case characteristics; staffing; infrastructure and equipment; capacity; the capacity of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services; and operational demands.

The authors infer that OFO's effective monthly capacity to process likely asylum seekers and UACs in a safe, humane, and orderly manner at the level of resources present as of May 2023 is around 47,000–48,000 aliens.

Substantially increasing OFO processing capacity such that all or most likely asylum seekers and UACs (based on levels observed between October 2022 and February 2024) are processed at POEs would be extremely challenging at best.

Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2025, 109p.

By Michael E. Clements and Gretta L. Goodwin

This Study Drug and human trafficking are longstanding and pervasive problems. Federal law enforcement agencies have noted the use of online marketplaces, such as social media sites and messaging platforms, in drug and human trafficking. Further, agencies have expressed concern about traffickers’ increased use of virtual currencies—that is, digital representations of value that are usually not government-issued legal tender. The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021 includes a provision for GAO to review how a range of methods and payment systems, including online marketplaces and virtual currencies, are used to facilitate drug and human trafficking. This report examines what is known about drug and human traffickers’ use of online marketplaces and virtual currencies, efforts by federal and state agencies to counter such trafficking, and benefits and challenges virtual currencies pose for detecting and prosecuting drug and human trafficking, among other objectives. GAO reviewed federal agency and industry documentation and GAO’s relevant body of past work; interviewed officials at federal and state agencies and industry and nonprofit stakeholders; and reviewed recently adjudicated cases involving the use of virtual currencies in drug or human trafficking.

  GAO-22-105101., Washington DC: U.S. Government Accountability Office, 2022. 57p.

Dany Bahar, Rebecca J. Brough, and Giovanni Peri

The inflow of refugees and their subsequent integration can be an important challenge for both the refugees themselves and the host society. Policy interventions can improve the lives and economic success of refugees and of their communities. In this paper, we review the socioeconomic integration policy interventions focused on refugees and the evidence surrounding them. We also highlight some interesting topics for future research and stress the need to rigorously evaluate their effectiveness and implications for the successful integration of refugees.

WORKING PAPER 687 · MARCH 2024

Washington DC: Center for Global Development, 2024. 55p.

By Asad L. Asad

Drawing on in-depth interviews with 50 Latin American immigrants in Dallas, Texas, this article uncovers systematic distinctions in how immigrants holding different legal statuses perceive the threat of deportation. Undocumented immigrants recognize the precarity of their legal status, but they sometimes feel that their existence off the radar of the US immigration regime promotes their long-term presence in the country. Meanwhile, documented immigrants perceive stability in their legal status, but they sometimes view their existence on the radar of the US immigration regime as disadvantageous to their long-term presence in the country. The article offers the concept of system embeddedness—individuals' perceived legibility to institutions that maintain formal records—as a mechanism through which perceived visibility to the US immigration regime entails feelings of risk, and perceived invisibility feelings of safety. In this way, the punitive character of the US immigration regime can overwhelm its integrative functions, chilling immigrants out of opportunities for material and social well-being through legalization and legal status. More broadly, system embeddedness illuminates how perceived visibility to a record-keeping body that combines punitive and integrative goals represents a mechanism of legal stratification for subordinated populations—even absent prior punitive experiences with other social control institutions that might otherwise be thought to trigger their system avoidance.

Law & Society Review, Volume 54, Number 1 (2020): 133–167

By Global Detention Project

  Immigration detention is an important tool of immigration control in Taiwan (also “Taiwan Province of China”), where detainee numbers have steadily risen in recent years. Although conditions in Taiwan’s detention centres have frequently been criticised, they have received little international scrutiny because of China’s opposition to Taiwan’s UN membership. Taiwan also lacks an asylum system, though the need to establish asylum procedures has grown increasingly urgent as the numbers of Hong Kong residents seeking protection have grown.

Geneva, SWIT: Global Detention Project, 2024. 30p.  

By Polly Mackenzie

The current asylum system is built on a culture of disbelief that inherently lacks compassion, is not competent and therefore does not control immigration in the way the government aspires to. We have, as a nation, lost confidence in it. Recent experiments in different systems responding to the geopolitical events in Ukraine, Afghanistan and Hong Kong have started to develop new models we can all be more proud of. This paper argues that the Home Office should lose its responsibility for immigration, with a new arm’s-length body named Sanctuary UK set up to overhaul the system and create a new more humane system, learning from the best of the recent innovations.

London: Demos, 2022. 25p.

By Nieves Fernández-Rodríguez & Luisa Feline Freier

Against the background of remarkable policy liberalization and the subsequent steep increase of forced displacement in Latin America, the literature on immigration and refugee policy in the region has gained momentum. Although largely overlooked, this literature has the potential to provide a corrective to political migration theory from the Global South. In this article we carry out a systematic, critical review of the regional literature along three thematic axes: legal analyses, normative and explanatory studies. Based on the review of 108 journal articles, we describe the characteristics, main contributions and research gaps of each thematic area. By analyzing legal norms and policy implementation gaps, existing studies on Latin America provide an understanding of migration policy over time and offer important empirical evidence for the advancement of political migration theory, challenging some of the main assumptions attributed to policies in the Global South. However, the lack of engagement with the broader literature and the absence of systematic analyses of its determinants and effects significantly limit the potential of this body of work. We close by making concrete suggestions of how future studies could fill existing gaps both in theoretical and empirical terms, and which methodological approach should be employed.

Comparative Migration Studies volume 12, Article number: 15 (2024)

By Peter William Walsh and Mihnea Cuibus

This briefing examines the deportation, removal, and voluntary departure of people without the right to be in the UK. It presents statistics on the numbers and characteristics of people who are removed from the UK or who leave voluntarily.

Key Points Returns from the UK remained low compared to historical levels but returned to pre-pandemic levels in 2023 Enforced returns have declined sharply over the long run Voluntary returns increased significantly after the pandemic, following several years of decline Around 41% of those who submitted an asylum application between 2010 and 2020, and were refused, had been returned from the UK by June 2022 Around 1.3% of people who arrived by small boat from 2018 to June 2023 were returned from the UK during that period In the year ending 30 September 2023, the top nationalities among returnees were Albanian (20%), Indian (15%), and Brazilian (12%) In the year ending 30 September 2023, 16% of all people removed from the UK were foreign national offenders, and 53% of returned FNOs were EU citizens EU citizens made up a majority of people refused entry at the UK border after 2021 \

Oxford, UK: The Migration Observatory

COMPAS (Centre on Migration, Policy and Society)

University of Oxford2024. 15p.

By Melanie Griffiths and

Peter William Walsh

This briefing examines immigration detention in the UK. It discusses who is detained, for how long, with what effects, and the financial costs of operating the system.

Key Points Immigration detention is used worldwide by governments to facilitate immigration enforcement, but has negative impacts on detainees’ mental health. The use of immigration detention in the UK hit a high of around 32,000 in 2015. Numbers have been falling since then, with around 16,000 people entering detention in 2023. Around 1,800 people were in immigration detention on 30 June 2024. In mid-2024, the UK had an estimated detention capacity of around 2,200 beds, of which around 77% were occupied. In 2023, the Home Office detained 18 children for immigration-related purposes, down from around 1,100 in 2009. In 2023, 39% of immigration detainees were held for more than 28 days. Release on immigration bail – an alternative to detention where detainees are released into the community – increased from 2010 to 2021 but fell by 2023. In Q2 2024, the average daily cost to hold an individual in immigration detention was £122. In the financial year 2023-24, the Home Office issued 838 compensation payments for unlawful detention, totalling around £12 million.

Oxford, UK: Migration Observatory, University of Oxford, 2024. 18p.