By Vicky Xiuzhong Xu with Danielle Cave, James Leibold, Kelsey Munro, Nathan Ruser

The Chinese government has facilitated the mass transfer of Uyghur and other ethnic minority citizens from the far west region of Xinjiang to factories across the country. Under conditions that strongly suggest forced labour, Uyghurs are working in factories that are in the supply chains of at least 82 well-known global brands in the technology, clothing and automotive sectors, including Apple, BMW, Gap, Huawei, Nike, Samsung, Sony and Volkswagen. This report estimates that more than 80,000 Uyghurs were transferred out of Xinjiang to work in factories across China between 2017 and 2019, and some of them were sent directly from detention camps. The estimated figure is conservative and the actual figure is likely to be far higher. In factories far away from home, they typically live in segregated dormitories, undergo organised Mandarin and ideological training outside working hours, are subject to constant surveillance, and are forbidden from participating in religious observances. Numerous sources, including government documents, show that transferred workers are assigned minders and have limited freedom of movement. China has attracted international condemnation for its network of extrajudicial ‘re-education camps’ in Xinjiang. This report exposes a new phase in China’s social re-engineering campaign targeting minority citizens, revealing new evidence that some factories across China are using forced Uyghur labour under a state-sponsored labour transfer scheme that is tainting the global supply chain.

Barton ACT, Australia: Australian Strategic Policy Institute, 2020. 86p.

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.

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 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 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.

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.

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.

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  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 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 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 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 Alex Nowrasteh, Andrew C. Forrester and Michelangelo Landgrave

Donald J. Trump launched his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination in June 2015 by comments on illegal immigrants and the crime they commit in the United States. “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you,” he said. “They’re sending people that have lots of problems and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists, and some, I assume, are good people.”1 A few weeks after Trump’s announcement, 32- year-old Kate Steinle was shot and killed by an illegal immigrant Jos´e Inez Garc´ıa Z´arate in San Francisco, California. Although Z´arate was later acquitted of all murder and manslaughter charges due to mistakes made by the prosecutor, his shooting of Steinle seemed to support Trump’s worry about illegal immigrants causing a crime spree and helped win him the election in 2016. As tragic as the shooting and death of Kate Steinle was, it was one of the 13,455 murders that year in the United States and it does not tell us how many of those victims were murdered by illegal immigrants.2 The most important measure that matters when judging the crime rates of illegal immigrants is how likely they are to be criminals compared to other sub-populations. If illegal immigrants are more likely to be criminals then their presence in the United States would raise crime rates, supporting Trump’s assertions. But if illegal immigrants are less likely to commit crime then they would lower the nationwide crime rate. Politically, this debate spills over to evaluating whether domestic immigration enforcement policies reduce crime. Illegal immigrant crime is also central to the debate over sanctuary jurisdictions that refuse to turn over many illegal immigrants to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the effects of a border wall, and whether Border Patrol requires more resources to counter crime along the border. Answering whether illegal immigrants are particularly crime prone is essential to addressing these concerns and setting efficient anti-crime policies.

Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 2020. 30p.

By Nazgol Ghandnoosh and Josh Rovner

Starting from his first day as a candidate, President Donald Trump has made demonstrably false claims associating immigrants with criminality. As president, he has sought to justify restrictive immigration policies, such as increasing detentions and deportations and building a southern border wall, as public safety measures. He has also linked immigrants with crime through an Executive Order directing the Attorney General to establish a task force to assist in “developing strategies to reduce crime, including, in particular, illegal immigration, drug trafficking, and violent crime,” and by directing the Department of Homeland Security to create an office to assist and publicize victims of crimes committed by immigrants. By surveying key research on immigration and crime, this report seeks to enable the public and policymakers to engage in a more meaningful policy debate rooted in facts. Immigrants’ impact on public safety is a well-examined field of study.

Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project, 2017. 18p.

By Kristin Littel and Timothy Woods

This report suggests ways to foster partnerships between immigrant advocacy organizations and law enforcement at national, State, and local levels which address the challenges to community policy within immigrant populations. This report summarizes findings on the challenges of interacting with immigrant populations and provides strategies to address these challenges. Issues discussed include: how to address the lack of law enforcement resources, how to address language barriers that exist for law enforcement officers when policing in immigrant communities, how to address inherent immigrant distrust of law enforcement, how to identify community partners, how to develop agency policies locally, what specialized training is needed for law enforcement officers, how to conduct proactive outreach to immigrant populations, what immigrants' concerns are regarding deportation, and what the standard procedures and actions are for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Washington, DC: Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS, 2010. 27p,

By The ADL (Anti-Defamation League), 2022.

The internationalization of white supremacy is strengthening a hateful and dangerous ideology. White supremacists around the world are meeting online and in person at conferences, capitalizing on the digitalization of information, which has in turn accelerated the international exchange of ideas. These virtual and actual gatherings provide key opportunities for white supremacists to share ideas and tactics and recruit new followers. Meanwhile, over the past decade, we have seen surging violence in the United States and Europe motivated by right-wing extremism. The perpetrators are connected by an extremist ideology that continues to gain international followers. This report exposes the mutual influence of white supremacists in the United States, Canada and Europe and highlights the danger of these connections. “Hate Beyond Borders” was produced through a collaboration between researchers at ADL’s Center on Extremism in the U.S. and European extremism researchers at the Amadeu Antonio Foundation (Germany), Community Security Trust (UK), Expo Foundation (Sweden), Observatoire des Radicalités Politiques, Fondation Jean Jaurès, (France) and Never Again Association (Poland).

New York: ADL (Anti-Defamation League), 2022. 16p.

By The Southern Poverty Law Center

This report features stories from women swept up in the Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids that began on Jan. 2, 2016. The report by the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights found that the federal government has engaged in a needlessly aggressive – and potentially unconstitutional – act against immigrants with these home raids that targeted women and children from Central America.

Montgomery, AL: SPLC, 2016. 28p.

By The United States Commission on Civil Rights

This Statutory Enforcement Report examines the civil rights and constitutional concerns that the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (Commission) “raised with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its component [agencies] over the treatment of adult and minor [immigrant] detainees [who are being] held under federal law in detention centers across the country.” Specifically, this report analyzes the constitutional issues surrounding DHS’s treatment of detained immigrants as well as other selected federal agencies’ efforts to comply with established Performance Based National Detention Standards (PBNDS), the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 (PREA), and the federal standards for detaining unaccompanied minor children.

It is within the Commission’s mandate to examine, study, and report upon civil rights violations inconsistent with the federal civil rights laws, the United States Constitution and the federal standards applicable to all persons within the United States and its territories. By statute, the Commission is authorized to examine federal policies and procedures that have a detrimental effect on the equal protection of law guaranteed to all persons under the Constitution. With regard to immigration, in 1980, the Commission released a report entitled The Tarnished Golden Door: Civil Rights Issues in Immigration that examined the civil rights issues surrounding the enforcement of the immigration laws of the United States. That report identified numerous issues surrounding the former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) administration and enforcement of U.S. immigration laws. Since the Commission published that 1980 report, however, federal immigration laws and their enforcement practices have undergone numerous, sweeping changes.

Washington, DC: The Commission, 2015. 276p.