Edited by Robert T. Chase

This volume considers the interconnection of racial oppression in the U.S. South and West, presenting thirteen case studies that explore the ways in which citizens and migrants alike have been caged, detained, deported, and incarcerated, and what these practices tell us about state building, converging and coercive legal powers, and national sovereignty. As these studies depict the institutional development and state scaffolding of overlapping carceral regimes, they also consider how prisoners and immigrants resisted such oppression and violence by drawing on the transnational politics of human rights and liberation, transcending the isolation of incarceration, detention, deportation and the boundaries of domestic law.

Durham, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2019. 440p.

Steven F. Lawson

Running for Freedom, Fourth Edition, updates historian Steven Lawson’s classic volume detailing the history of African-American civil rights and black politics from the beginning of World War II to the present day.

Offers comprehensive coverage of the African-American struggle for civil rights in the U.S. from 1941 to 2014

Integrates events relating to America’s civil rights story at both the local and national levels

Features new material on Obama’s first term in office and the first year of his second term

Includes addition of such timely issues as the Trayvon Martin case, the March on Washington 5oth anniversary, state voter suppression efforts, and Supreme Court ruling on Voting Rights Act

US. McGraw-Hill. 1991. 317p.

By U.S. Citizenship And Immigration Services

From the Message From the Director, Ur M. Jaddou: "I am proud to share the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Strategic Plan for fiscal years 2023 to 2026. This plan is grounded in USCIS' longstanding mission and firm commitment to making the United States a stronger, more inclusive, and welcoming nation, and preserving the integrity of the U.S. immigration programs we administer. At its core, USCIS has the responsibility to deliver decisions about immigration service requests to individuals while ensuring the security of our nation. The work of USCIS employees makes the possibility of the American dream a reality for immigrants, the communities and economies they join, and the nation as a whole. [...] This new strategic plan is the continuation and expansion of activities stemming from the five priorities I announced in FY 2022, illuminating our pathway into the future. Our new strategic plan will be our roadmap to realize our own promise as an agency of transparency and responsiveness - an agency that upholds the legal immigration system, supports, and engages its employees, and fosters collaboration to deliver high-quality results. While USCIS has made strides in reducing undue barriers to immigration benefits and services, we have much more to do to achieve a modern, fair, and effective immigration system."

Washington. DC. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services., 2023. 28p.

By M.N. Parsons, M. Camello, T. Craig, M. Dix, M. Planty, J.D. Roper-Miller

This technology brief is part of a series of documents that focuses on contraband in corrections. The first brief provides an overview of contraband, including types and associated technologies and products used to detect contraband on people, in vehicles, and in the environment. This brief focuses specifically on strategies to detect and manage drug contraband. The goal of this series is to offer foundational insights from use cases, highlight challenges of contraband detection, compare illustrative products, and discuss the future of contraband detection and management.

Washington, DC: U.S. National Institute of Justice, 2021. 14p.

By Alexis A. Aronowitz

From the cover: Virtually every country' in the world is affected by the scourge of human trafficking, either as a source, transit, or destination country, or a combination thereof. While countries have long focused on international trafficking, internal movement and exploitation within countries may be even more prevalent than trans- border trafficking. Patterns of trafficking vary across countries and regions and are in a constant state of flux. Countries have long focused on trafficking solely for the purpose of sexual exploitation, yet exploitation in agriculture, construction, fishing, manufacturing, and the domestic and food service industries is prevalent in many countries. Here, Aronowitz takes a global perspective in examining the nefarious underworld of human trafficking, revealing the nature and extent of the harm caused by this hideous criminal practice. Taking a victims-oriented approach, this book focuses on the different groups of victims, as well as the various forms of and markets for trafficking, many of which have been overlooked due to an emphasis on sex trafficking. The author also examines the criminals and criminal organizations that traffic and exploit their victims and explores less-ffequendy-discussed forms of trafficking— in organs, child soldiers, mail-order brides, and adoption, as well as the use of the Internet in trafficking. Drawing on her own field and research experiences in various parts of the world, the author offers real-life context throughout the book through descriptions of a number of cases with which she was involved or learned about in her travels.

Santa Barbara. PRAEGER. An Imprint of ABC-CLIO. 2009. 290p.

By The Global Detention Project

Mexico has one of the largest immigration detention systems in the world, employing several dozen detention centres—euphemistically called estaciones migratorias—and detaining tens of thousands of people every year. Intense pressure from the United States and continuing migration from turmoil-wracked Central America have helped drive up detention numbers, which surpassed 180,000 in 2019. The COVID-19 pandemic further stressed the country’s migration response. It temporarily released most detainees after the onset of the pandemic even as the United States continued deporting both Mexican and third-country nationals to Mexico. In late 2020, the country adopted reforms to its migration law prohibiting the detention of all children, though many observers expressed scepticism over whether it would be respected.

Geneva: Global Detention Project, 2021. 37p.

By  Christopher Horwood

Just as the world’s governments have, for some decades, waged war on international drug trafficking, there are increasing signals that global authorities have embarked on a major offensive against the growing phenomenon of migrant smuggling in addition to their existing fight against human trafficking.1 One of the most unambiguous of these signals came in April 2015, when Dimitris Avramopoulos, the European Union’s top official for migration,2 told a news conference: “we will take action now. Europe is declaring war on [migrant] smugglers. Europe is united in this effort. We will do this together with our partners outside Europe. We will work together because smuggling is not a European problem — it is a global one.”3 Largely because of its clandestine nature, there is insufficient data available to gauge the global extent of migrant smuggling. Still, existing research offers some hints: according to one recent estimate, some 2.5 million migrants across the world used smugglers in 2016, generating an economic return of at least $5.5 billion dollars.4 ‘Since the migration crisis in 2015 the migrant smuggling business has established itself as a large, lucrative and sophisticated criminal market.’5 This paper, like others before it, argues that the main motivation behind the new offensive against migrant smugglers is not only the much-vaunted concern for the safety and protection of migrants and refugees6 (Avramopoulos prefaced his declaration with the words ‘one more life lost [at sea] is one too many’) but also the fact that migrant smugglers are the main vector and means for irregular migration. Rightly or wrongly, irregular migration is portrayed, even if disingenuously, by governments and many electorates as undesirable from a socio-political, security and economic perspective, and as a potential cause of future social unrest and political disruption.   

Geneva: Mixed Migration Centre, 2019. 78p.

Over the last 30 years, thousands of dead Latino migrant bodies have been found along the United States-Mexico boundary. These casualties are directly related to the Border Patrol’s “prevention through deterrence” (PTD) policing strategy, which funnels crossing migrants into remote and deadly deserts, mountains, and waterways. In response, local residents have created various formal and informal organizations to help provide life-saving aid to vulnerable crossing migrants. However, President Trump and Border Patrol agents have sought to criminalize and stop the work of humanitarian aid volunteers at the border. The data presented in this brief reveal that the American public overwhelmingly (87%) opposes—including the vast majority of Republicans (71%)—the criminalization of humanitarian aid workers at the border. 

Los Angeles: UCLA Latino Policy & Politics Initiative, 2020. 6p.

The Trump administration implemented a total of 363 policy changes to interior enforcement with the overarching goal of subjecting all undocumented immigrants to enforcement actions. President Biden assumed office following significant commitments to implement changes to immigration enforcement, to limit enforcement activities, and to reduce the hardship experienced by noncitizens and their families.

This report analyzes some of the most consequential changes to immigration enforcement implemented by the Trump administration, the changes that President Biden committed to making during his campaign and transition, and the progress that his administration has achieved in its first 100 days. The report concludes with recommendations for additional changes that the administration should prioritize in working to create a fairer and more humane system of immigration enforcement.

Washington, DC: American immigration Council, 2021. 33p.

By  Wendy Edelberg and Tara Watson 

This policy proposal is a proposal from the author(s). As emphasized in The Hamilton Project’s original strategy paper, the Project was designed in part to provide a forum for leading thinkers across the nation to put forward innovative and potentially important economic policy ideas that share the Project’s broad goals of promoting economic growth, broad-based participation in growth, and economic security. The author(s) are invited to express their own ideas in policy proposals , whether or not the Project’s staff or advisory council agrees with the specific proposals. This policy proposal is offered in that spirit.  

  Immigration is good for the US economy and for the fiscal picture at the federal level, but some local areas experience adverse fiscal impacts when new immigrants arrive. Edelberg and Watson propose a transparent system for redistributing resources from the federal government to these localities. Local areas would receive $2,500 annually for each adult immigrant who arrived to the US within the past five years without a college degree—those more likely to generate negative fiscal flows at the subnational level. The funds would take the form of unrestricted transfers to local educational agencies through the existing Impact Aid program and to Federally Qualified Health Centers. This support would help to offset educational, health, and other costs to local areas associated with immigrant inflows, and more equitably share the overall fiscal and economic benefits of immigration.   

Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution and The Hamilton Project , 2022.   26p.

By Kathleen O’Connor, Claire Thomas-Duckwitz, and  Guillermina Gina Nuñez-Mchiri  

The 1951 Refugee Convention of the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) defines a refugee as someone who "owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable to, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country." Further, the UNHCR is particularly concerned with refugees in Latin America and the Caribbean and uses the term refugee to describe persons fleeing from violence in Central America (U.N. High Commission for Refugees 2014). Thus, in this document, we refer to immigrants detained in the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas (“Dilley”), as refugees because they have been persecuted by virtue of their membership in a social group, are outside their country of origin, are fleeing extreme violence, and fear returning to their countries of origin, which provided no protection from violence and persecution. Throughout the report, refugees who agreed to speak with the team and to an assessment of mental health outcomes are also referred to as study participants, participants, or respondents. During fieldwork from July 22 to July 24, 2015, a team of mental and behavioral health specialists collected the following data at Dilley, at the Greyhound Bus Station in San Antonio, and at the Hospitality House, a shelter in San Antonio where refugees are housed temporarily en route to resettlement areas throughout the United States  

 Cambridge, MA: Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC), 2015. 82p.

By George Fishman

  • Juveniles commit a large number of serious offenses. In 2020, there were 1,353 known juvenile homicide offenders. In 2019, juveniles constituted 21 percent of all arrests for robbery, 20 percent for arson, 17 percent for car theft, 12 percent for burglary, 10 percent for larceny-theft and weapons offenses, eight percent for murder, and seven percent for aggravated assault. In 2012, the last year for which data is available, juveniles accounted for 14 percent of all arrests for forcible rape. • Despite the successful framing of DREAMers and DACA recipients as young people with no criminal records, it turns out that many were affiliated with gangs and many had arrest records when granted DACA benefits, and many others saw their DACA status terminated because of criminal activity. As USCIS has admitted, “[t]he truth is that we let those with criminal arrests for sexually assaulting a minor, kidnapping, human trafficking, child pornography, or even murder be provided protection from removal.” • Juvenile perpetrators are much more likely to be processed through a juvenile justice system than a criminal court. The Los Angeles County District Attorney made the decision (still largely in effect) to not send any juveniles to criminal court, no matter the gravity of their crimes. • Most juveniles adjudicated delinquent in juvenile court are not placed into any sort of out-of-home detention, including for such offenses as aggravated assault and robbery. • Congress has determined that all aliens (regardless of their immigration status) are subject to removal upon conviction for a wide range of crimes. Congress has also determined that aliens are subject to mandatory detention and are ineligible for a wide range of immigration benefits and relief upon conviction for a wide range of crimes.

Washington, DC: Center for Immigration Studies, 2022. 33p.   

By Lilana Keith

Across Europe, people live and work while having irregular migration status, economically, socially and culturally enriching their communities and countries of residence. Undocumented migrants contribute directly and indirectly to social protection systems, as taxpayers, workers and informal carers. Undocumented workers are a key part of the domestic work and care workforce, caring for children, elderly and people with long-term social support and care needs, and enabling labour market participation and work-life balance.1 Nonetheless, states severely restrict access to social protection for people with temporary, precarious or irregular residence status. Although undocumented migrants face various economic and social risks and vulnerabilities, they are excluded from many of the basic mechanisms of social protection put in place to address vulnerabilities and provide a minimum social safety net, including access to subsidised housing and income security. Such exclusion compounds the risks of in-work poverty, destitution, homelessness, violence and exploitation – all of which undocumented migrants face due to discrimination linked to their residence status. Restrictions on access to social protection associated with a person’s residence permit can also be a major reason for people not being able to renew their permit, if the conditions of their permit require them to be financially independent without recourse to public social assistance. The European Commission notes that housing “has a major influence on immigrants’ employment options, educational opportunities, social interactions, residence situation, family reunification and citizenship rights”.2 Income security is scarce among undocumented migrants due to their precarious employment situations, which can include unsafe working conditions, low pay, long hours, job insecurity, and lack of sick leave.3

Brussels: PICUM, 2022. 38p.  

By David Goodhart  

The Government has steadied the ship in recent weeks after the Liz Truss misadventure. But if there is any chance of winning back some of the 2019 coalition, one condition of being competitive at the next election, the Government will need some visible policy progress in three big areas: NHS performance, levelling up and immigration (including stopping the Channel boats). This paper focuses on that third policy field. Attitudes to immigration have liberalised somewhat since Brexit ended free movement reinforced by the persistent publicity about labour shortages. But anxiety about immigration is likely to rise again sharply following the unprecedented post-Covid surge in legal net migration, with the illegal Channel boats as a backdrop, and the probable revival of the Reform party to highlight Conservative failed pledges on immigration.

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  The net immigration figure of 504,000 in the year to June, easily the largest ever annual increase, creates another headache for the Government but is mainly due to one-off factors—a post-Covid catch up on student migration (277,000) and a surge in mainly legal refugee inflows (276,000) which are unlikely to be repeated, including the large numbers from Ukraine, Hong Kong and Afghanistan. Only about 150,000 of the net migration figure is people coming on work visas (around 20%) but most of them and almost all the students will only be here temporarily. Notwithstanding this unsustainable surge, Britain’s post-Brexit immigration system is broadly striking the right balance. It is already more open than many comparable countries, with greater restrictions on most low paying jobs than in the EU era but with almost two-thirds of jobs subject to a potential work visa. Outside of some very specific areas, such as seasonal agricultural work, there is no case for more liberalisation, especially in the light of the unprecedented half a million number, but this paper makes some suggestions for further reform under three main headings, and concludes with an analysis of the Channel boats problem.  

London: Policy Exchange, 2022. 23p.

By Michael Garcia Bochenek

In the two years since the “Remain in Mexico” program began in January 2019, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has sent more than 69,000 people to Mexico while their US asylum claims are pending. This number includes families with children of all ages, some of them with disabilities, including newborns, infants, and toddlers. The program applies to nationals of all Latin American countries, including Brazilians and members of Indigenous communities who do not speak Spanish. Formally known as the “Migration Protection Protocols” (MPP), the program is anything but protective: it has sent people to some of Mexico’s most dangerous cities and needlessly and foreseeably exposed them to considerable risk of serious harm. Those interviewed for this report described being subjected to rape or attempted rape and other sexual assault, abduction for ransom, extortion, armed robbery, and other crimes, in many cases immediately after US authorities sent them to Mexico or as they returned from US immigration court hearings. In some cases, Mexican immigration officers or police committed these crimes. In theory, the MPP has two safeguards against return to harm, but neither is effective in practice. First, US officials are not supposed to send people to Mexico under the program if an asylum officer finds that they are likely to face threats to their lives or freedom or if they would be tortured there. Second, DHS has said that it will not place “vulnerable” people in the MPP. These exemptions are rarely granted, even though Human Rights Watch found many cases that

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  would qualify. MPP hearings were suspended in March 2020 in response to the Covid-19 pandemic and had not resumed by the end of December 2020. Thousands of people are concentrated in dangerous Mexican border towns indefinitely, living lives in limbo, many dependent on the generosity of humanitarian groups and volunteers for accommodation, food, and health care. Many of the people interviewed for this report described changes in their children’s behavior, causing parents increasing feelings of anxiety for their children’s well-being. The Biden administration should immediately terminate the MPP program and allow those placed in the MPP to reenter the United States and remain until their asylum claims are resolved.

New York: Human Rights Watch, 2021. 115p.

By Jorge Ramos with Kristina Cordero (Translator)

On May 14, 2003, a familiar risk-filled journey, taken by hopeful Mexican immigrants attempting to illegally cross into the United States, took a tragic turn. Inside a sweltering truck abandoned in Texas, authorities found at least 74 people packed into a "human heap of desperation." After months of investigation, a 25-year-old Honduran-born woman named Karla Chavez was found responsible for leading the human trafficking cell that led to this grisly tragedy in which 19 people died. Through interviews with survivors who had the courage to share their stories and conversations with the victims' families, and in examining the political implications of the incident for both U.S. and Mexican immigration policies, Jorge Ramos tells the story of one of the most heartbreaking episodes of our nation's turbulent history of immigration.

New York: Harper Collins, 2006. 208p.

By Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia

When Beatles star John Lennon faced deportation from the U.S. in the 1970s, his lawyer Leon Wildes made a groundbreaking argument. He argued that Lennon should be granted “nonpriority” status pursuant to INS’s (now DHS’s) policy of prosecutorial discretion. In U.S. immigration law, the agency exercises prosecutorial discretion favorably when it refrains from enforcing the full scope of immigration law. A prosecutorial discretion grant is important to an agency seeking to focus its priorities on the “truly dangerous” in order to conserve resources and to bring compassion into immigration enforcement. The Lennon case marked the first moment that the immigration agency’s prosecutorial discretion policy became public knowledge. Today, the concept of prosecutorial discretion is more widely known in light of the Obama Administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals or DACA program, a record number of deportations and a stalemate in Congress to move immigration reform. Beyond Deportation is the first book to comprehensively describe the history, theory, and application of prosecutorial discretion in immigration law. It provides a rich history of the role of prosecutorial discretion in the immigration system and unveils the powerful role it plays in protecting individuals from deportation and saving the government resources. Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia draws on her years of experience as an immigration attorney, policy leader, and law professor to advocate for a bolder standard on prosecutorial discretion, greater mechanisms for accountability when such standards are

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  ignored, improved transparency about the cases involving prosecutorial discretion, and recognition of “deferred action” in the law as a formal benefit.

New York: New York University Press, 2015.

By Lisa (Leigh) Patel

Illegal. Undocumented. Remedial. DREAMers. All of these labels have been applied to immigrant youth. Using a combination of engaging narrative and rigorous analysis, this book<em>explores how immigrant youth are included in, and excluded from, various sectors of American society, including education. Instead of the land of opportunity, immigrant youth often encounter myriad new borders long after their physical journey to the United States is over. With an intimate storytelling style, the author invites readers to rethink assumptions about immigrant youth and what their often liminal positions reveal about the politics of inclusion in America.

New York: Teachers College Press, 2013. 144p.

By Lisa Meierotto

This book examines the convergence of conservation and security efforts along the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona. The author presents a unique analysis of the history of Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, a federally protected border wilderness area. Beginning in the early 1990s, changes to U.S. immigration policy dramatically altered the political and natural landscape in and around Cabeza Prieta. In particular, the increasing presence of Border Patrol has contributed to environmental degradation in the wilderness. Complicated human rights concerns are also explored in the book. Protecting wildlife in an area with high rates of undocumented border-crossing and smuggling results in complex and sometimes controversial conservation policies. Ultimately, the observations and analysis presented in this book illustrate ways in which the politics of race and nationalism are subtly, but significantly, interwoven into border environmental and security policies.

Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. 208p.

Edited by Agustín Escobar Latapí and Claudia Masferrer

This open access Regional Reader describes how Mexico - United States migration changed substantially during the first decade of the 21st Century. The book provides an in-depth analysis on the changes in the flows into and out of both countries, thus highlighting the issues arising from Mexico - US migration as well as addressing the large numbers of adults and children entering Mexico from the United States. It covers how this tidal change affects the Hispanic population of the U.S. and return migrants' reincorporation in Mexico; their jobs, access to school, health and access to health services, how fear became a dominant aspect of Mexicans’ lives in the U.S., and the role played by crime and social policy in Mexico.

Cham: Springer Nature, 2022. 278p.