By Catalina Amuedo-Dorantes and Mary J. Lopez

The increase in immigration enforcement during the past two decades has led to a larger number of immigrants being detained in the U.S. criminal justice system. Using data from the 2006–2018 Annual Survey of Jails, we examine the impact of immigrants being held for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on the conditions in U.S. jails. We find that increases in the number of detainees held for ICE are related to higher noncitizen jailed populations that are not offset by reductions in their citizen counterparts, likely contributing to worse confinement conditions. This is reflected in the higher levels of overcrowding and understaffing, as well as in the longer stays in jail and more physical assaults associated with a larger number of ICE detainees. These findings prove robust to using data on two local interior immigration enforcement programs responsible for the growing number of immigrant detainees in local jails—287(g) agreements and Secure Communities—as instruments to address the endogeneity of the number of ICE detainees with respect to jail conditions. The results are driven by slightly over half of U.S. counties located either along the United States– Mexico border or in states with a large or fast-growing immigrant population. 

Criminology & Public Policy 202022022:21:433-460

By Diego Chaves-González and Carlos Echeverría-Estrada

More than 5 million Venezuelans have left their country due to the ongoing political and economic crises there. More than 4 million of these refugees and migrants have moved to other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. This has challenged receiving-country governments to rapidly rethink their policies for admitting and granting status to newcomers, and to consider how to adapt education, health-care, and other systems to support both migrants and the communities in which they settle. The COVID-19 pandemic that hit the region in early 2020 has added a further layer of complexity, as well as new risks for people on the move.

This fact sheet presents a profile of refugees and migrants travelling across 11 Latin American and Caribbean countries in 2019—Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Trinidad and Tobago, and Uruguay. The data analyzed come from the Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM), through which the International Organization for Migration (IOM) collects information about refugee and migrant demographic characteristics, labor market participation, trip details, difficulties encountered while travelling, and more.

Washington, DC: Migration Policy Institute, 2020. 31p.

By Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera

Migration trends in the Americas recently have undergone a significant transformation. During the past few years, an increasing number of migrants and asylum seekers from different parts of the hemisphere—and other regions of the world, including Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia and the African continent—have been undertaking a very long and arduous journey to the United States. Migrant mobility has been facilitated by sophisticated smuggling networks (that operate often in tandem with other criminal organizations) and corrupt officials.

Cambridge, MA: Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School, 2022. 15p,

By The American Immigration Council

The United States has broad authority to detain certain categories of immigrants, migrants, and others seeking humanitarian protection as their proceedings wind their way through the immigration legal system. This detention is “civil” by definition (as opposed to criminal), meaning that immigration detention should not be punitive in nature. Despite this technical legal distinction, most of the immigration detention infrastructure is indistinguishable from the criminal detention context, in some instances using the same facilities and private corporations to operate detention centers and jails. 

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) states that the purpose of immigration detention is twofold: 1) to protect the wider community from those noncitizens who may pose a safety risk; and 2) to ensure that the individual will comply with any immigration proceedings (including removal). For the last two decades, there has been increasing interest in the United States and abroad to create and expand alternatives to detention for noncitizens who would otherwise be sent to immigration detention centers. This is due to an increasing understanding that detention is fundamentally harmful and inhumane—especially to immigrants of color— that there are alternatives that can achieve similar objectives to those the government is pursuing, and that there has been very little meaningful reform of immigration detention itself. For example, the current standards that govern the conditions of most immigrant detention centers, the Performance-Based National Detention Standards, were explicitly based on criminal pre-trial detention and were written in 2011, with minor updates made in 2016 and no updates in the years since then. Study after study has shown that alternatives to detention programs are generally more humane and more cost-effective than immigration detention.

Washington, DC: American Immigration Council, 2022. 9p.

By Evan J. Criddle

For generations, the United States has grappled with high levels of illegal immigration across the U.S.-Mexico border. This Article offers a novel theoretical framework to explain why legal order remains elusive at the border. Drawing inspiration from Lon Fuller’s “interactional view of law,” I argue that immigration law cannot attract compliance unless it is general, public, prospective, clear, consistent, and stable; obedience with its rules is feasible; and the law’s enforcement is congruent with the rules as enacted. The flagrant violation of any one of these principles could frustrate the development of a functional legal order. Remarkably, U.S. immigration law violates all of these principles in its treatment of asylum seekers. As the number of asylum seekers pursuing entry to the United States has risen sharply in recent years, these legality deficits have become increasingly salient. No wonder, then, that even the most aggressive deterrent measures — from mass prosecution to family separation to the construction of steel border walls — have failed to solve the United States’ border crisis. The United States faces an urgent dilemma: it may preserve the Immigration and Nationality Act (“INA”) in its current form, denying protection to too many forced migrants and reserving broad discretion to the Executive Branch, or it may establish a functional legal order at the border. It cannot have both.

If lawmakers were serious about establishing legal order at the border, there are measures they could take to strengthen the immigration system’s structural integrity. They could eliminate the Attorney General’s discretionary authority over asylum. They could clarify ambiguities in the INA to promote greater consistency, stability, and congruence in immigration adjudication and enforcement. They could extend protection to all forced migrants who face a serious risk of death, torture, rape, or other serious harm abroad, including victims of gang violence and gender-based violence. In short, they could enact laws that asylum seekers could rationally obey. To the extent that lawmakers are unwilling to take these steps, it is fair to question their commitment to establishing a functional legal order at the border.

UC Davis Law Review, Vol. 53; 2003.

By UNODC

Trafficking in persons is a serious crime and a violation of human rights that severely impacts the lives of its victims and undermines the security and well-being of societies as a whole. As the 2020 UNODC Global Report on Trafficking in Persons confirms, trafficking in persons is widespread around the world. Whilst the crime is mostly registered as a domestic phenomenon, it also has a transnational nature, where countries can be a country of origin, transit or destination, and sometimes all three at once. Given its magnitude, quantification of the crime can be difficult, particularly given that it also affects most industries and sectors and is connected to other forms of organised crime. For this reason, solutions to address the crime can neither be isolated nor merely involving governments. The complexity of trafficking in persons requires a holistic, coordinated and multi-stakeholder effort that spans geographies and sectors. Public agencies’ interventions require a multi- agency approach, but in addition the private sector must actively engage in this fight.

Examples of how public-private partnerships can be effective in sustaining these efforts are multi- pronged. For instance, private sector companies have at their disposal a wide range of technological tools that can be used to support governments’ anti-trafficking efforts. Private companies have the capacity to identify and address cases of trafficking and exploitation in their supply chain. In that regard, the public sector might acquire new skills and additional knowledge on sustainable procurement processes, how companies identify and manage risks and the multiple forms that trafficking can take. Finally, public-private partnerships can significantly facilitate investigations to trace the financial gains or organised criminal activities such as those involving trafficking in persons.

Vienna: UNODC, 2021. 124p.

Edited by Richard C.M. Mole

Europe is a popular destination for LGBTQ people seeking to escape discrimination and persecution. Yet, while European institutions have done much to promote the legal equality of sexual minorities and a number of states pride themselves on their acceptance of sexual diversity, the image of European tolerance and the reality faced by LGBTQ migrants and asylum seekers are often quite different. To engage with these conflicting discourses, Queer Migration and Asylum in Europe brings together scholars from politics, sociology, urban studies, anthropology and law to analyse how and why queer individuals migrate to or seek asylum in Europe, as well as the legal, social and political frameworks they are forced to navigate to feel at home or to regularise their status in the destination societies. The subjects covered include LGBTQ Latino migrants’ relationship with queer and diasporic spaces in London; diasporic consciousness of queer Polish, Russian and Brazilian migrants in Berlin; the role of the Council of Europe in shaping legal and policy frameworks relating to queer migration and asylum; the challenges facing bisexual asylum seekers; queer asylum and homonationalism in the Netherlands; and the role of space, faith and LGBTQ organisations in Germany, Italy, the UK and France in supporting queer asylum seekers.

London: UCL Press, 2021. 279p.

Edited by Carmelo Danisi • Moira Dustin • Nuno Ferreira Nina Held

This two-volume open-access book offers a theoretically and empirically-grounded portrayal of the experiences of people claiming international protection in Europe on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity (SOGI). It shows how European asylum systems might and should treat asylum claims based on people’s SOGI in a fairer, more humane way. Through a combined comparative, interdisciplinary (socio-legal), human rights, feminist, queer and intersectional approach, this book examines not only the legal experiences of people claiming asylum on grounds of their SOGI, but also their social experiences outside the asylum decision-making framework. The authors analyse how SOGI-related claims are adjudicated in different European frameworks (European Union, Council of Europe, Germany, Italy and UK) and offer detailed recommendations to adequately address the intersectional experiences of individuals seeking asylum. This unique approach ensures that the book is of interest not only to researchers in migration and refugee studies, law and wider academic communities, but also to policy makers and practitioners in the field of SOGI asylum.

Cham: Springer Nature/Imiscoe, 2021. 497p.

Edited by Marina Gržinić

Border Thinking: Disassembling Histories of Racialized Violence aims to question and provide answers to current border issues in Europe. Central to this investigation is a refugee crisis that is primarily a crisis of global Western capitalism and its components: modernization, nationalism, structural racism, dispossession, and social, political, and economic violence. In this volume, these notions and conditions are connected with the concept of borders, which seems to have disappeared as a function of the global neoliberal economy but is palpably reappearing again and again through deportations, segregations, and war. How can we think about these relations in an open way, beyond borders? Is it possible to develop border thinking for a radical transformation, as a means to revolutionize the state of things? To do this, we must reconsider what is possible for the social and the political as well as for art and culture.

Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2018. 307p.

Edited by Birgit Glorius • Jeroen Doomernik  

This open access book describes how the numerous arrivals of asylum seekers since 2015 shaped reception and integration processes in Europe. It addresses the structuration of asylum and reception systems, and spaces and places of reception on European, national, regional and local level. It also analyses perceptions and discourses on asylum and refugees, their evolvement and the consequences for policy development. Furthermore, it examines practices and policy developments in the field of refugee reception and integration. The volume shows and explains a variety of refugee reception and integration strategies and practices as specific outcome of multilevel governance processes in Europe. By addressing and contextualizing those multiple experiences of asylum seeker reception, the book is a valuable contribution to the literature on migration and integration, societal development and political culture in Europe.

Cham, SWIT: IMISCOE/Springer Open, 2020. 268p.

Edited by Tatiana Bazzichelli

The courageous acts of whistleblowing that inspired the world over the past few years have changed our perception of surveillance and control in today's information society. But what are the wider effects of whistleblowing as an act of dissent on politics, society, and the arts? How does it contribute to new courses of action, digital tools, and contents? This urgent intervention based on the work of Berlin's Disruption Network Lab examines this growing phenomenon, offering interdisciplinary pathways to empower the public by investigating whistleblowing as a developing political practice that has the ability to provoke change from within.

Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2021. 377p.

Edited by Anna Mratschkowski

Asylum and refugees in Europe – who can fix a broken system? In times of increasing waves of migration, collective bodies and their cooperation networks are of particular importance to the European asylum system. But who are those actors and what is their contribution to effecting a change in the situation of those seeking refuge in Europe? While the Common European Asylum System introduced standardised regulations for all EU-member states, the real situation in each country differs greatly from those official declarations, even leading to a humanitarian crisis at times. Using the theory of neo-institutionalism, current data from expert interviews, and website and document analyses from Italy, Spain, Greece, Cyprus, Malta and Germany, this study answers those questions. It illustrates how and if this gap between talk and action can be narrowed, how asylum-related organisations and their networks function and how far they contribute to this process.

Germany: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG 2017. 225p,

By Bryan L. Sykes, Meghan Ballard, Andrea Giuffre, Rebecca Goodsell, Daniela Kaiser, Vicente Celestino Mata, Justin Sola

Research on punishment and inequality finds that people with criminal records routinely avoid systems of surveillance. Yet scholarship on monetary sanctions shows that many people experiencing poverty with criminal legal system debt are also involved with the state in other domains of social life. How can these literatures be resolved? In this article, we posit that past research can be reconciled through a focus on financial double-dealing—disparate and contradictory economic entanglements that redistribute welfare resources from individuals to the criminal legal system and its institutional affiliates. Drawing on nationally representative survey data, as well as unique data collected on people with monetary sanctions in seven states, we find that individuals and families receiving cash and noncash public assistance are significantly more likely to owe monetary sanctions and are less likely to pay them. We discuss the implications of multiple-system involvement for ongoing surveillance.

RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences January 2022, 8 (1) 148-178

By Amairini Sanchez, Michele Cadigan, Dayo Abels-Sullivan, Bryan L. Sykes

 Research on crimmigration—the intersection where criminal and immigration law meet—shows that immigrants are increasingly punished and deported as a consequence of a criminal conviction. We investigate how immigration status shapes the imposition of monetary sanctions. By drawing on interview and court observational data from four states, we demonstrate that the legal opaqueness at the intersection of the crimmigration system often results in crimmigration sanctions—enhanced financial and nonfinancial penalties that are the result of an undocumented immigrant’s liminal legality. Findings show that immigrants are financially exploited through gaps in criminal and immigration law that allow for crimmigration sanctions in the form of bail predation and the exchange of higher financial penalties for reduced or no jail time, lessening an undocumented immigrant’s risk of deportation. The implications of these practices for due process are discussed in detail 

: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences January 2022, 8 (2) 76-97;

By  Amal Ali and Hannah Pittaway  

  This ground-breaking project centres on the lived experiences of Black, Asian and minority ethnic women in prison, and comes at a time when there is increased attention on race and gender inequality in the criminal justice system, but the combination of these issues rarely receives any government attention. We received over 300 survey responses from women in prison, prison staff and IMBs, improving our understanding of the double disadvantage that women from minority ethnic backgrounds face. We are very grateful to the women with lived experience who co-designed the survey and all those in custody for their honesty and openness when completing it. Their accounts of direct and indirect racism and poor treatment are shocking and distressing. Even more upsetting is their sense of fatalism - they see it as part of their everyday lives. The women lack confidence in the complaints system, do not trust that they will be treated fairly and are often unaware of how the IMB can help. The impact of the pandemic has made this worse. There is an urgent need to address these issues nationally and locally. IMBs play an important role given their day-to-day presence in prisons. Community scrutiny is a vital tool to hold criminal justice agencies to account. The CJA has focused on improving community scrutiny for several years looking at police powers, police custody and now prison custody. We consistently see the same themes: the need for better and more consistent data collection and analysis, more effective equalities training and support, and for community volunteers to be more representative of the populations in the criminal justice system. The recommendations in these reports map out sensible steps Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS), the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and IMBs can take to make positive change and I hope to see them being implemented with haste.    

London: Criminal Justice Alliance, 2022. 38p.

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

The report provides an analysis of how technology-facilitated trafficking in human beings has been approached from the perspective of policy and legislation across the OSCE participating States. While looking primarily at the accelerating shift toward government-led responses, the report also examines the policies and practices adopted by the private sector and civil society organizations. In addition, the report offers recommendations for policy and legislative responses by OSCE participating States to the misuse of technology to exploit victims.

Vienna, Austria: OSCE, 2022. 69p.

By Iris Chang

NY. Penguin. 1997. 314p.

In December 1937, one of the most horrific atrocities in the long annals of wartime barbarity occurred. The Japanese army swept into the ancient city of Nanking (what was then the capital of China), and within weeks, more than 300,000 Chinese civilians and soldiers were systematically raped, tortured, and murdered. In this seminal work, Iris Chang, whose own grandparents barely escaped the massacre, tells this history from three perspectives: that of the Japanese soldiers, that of the Chinese, and that of a group of Westerners who refused to abandon the city and created a safety zone, which saved almost 300,000 Chinese.

Drawing on extensive interviews with survivors and documents brought to light for the first time, Iris Chang's classic book is the definitive history of this horrifying episode.

By Gemma Dipoppa,  Guy Grossman and Stephanie Zonszein

Covid-19 caused a significant health and economic crisis, a condition identified as conducive to stigmatization and hateful behavior against minority groups. It is however unclear whether the threat of infection triggers violence in addition to stigmatization, and whether a violent reaction can happen at the onset of an unexpected economic shock before social hierarchies can be disrupted. Using a novel database of hate crimes across Italy, we show that (i) hate crimes against Asians increased substantially at the pandemic onset, and that (ii) the increase was concentrated in cities with higher expected unemployment, but not higher mortality. We then examine individual, local and national mobilization as mechanisms. We find that (iii) local far-right institutions motivate hate crimes, while we find no support for the role of individual prejudice and national discourse. Our study identifies new conditions triggering hateful behavior, advancing our understanding of factors hindering migrant integration

ESOC Working Paper Series: 2021. 70p.

 By Vasanthi Venkatesh  

Arizona has been in the news for the past few years not only for its vituperative, anti-immigrant policies, but also for the impressive immigrant rights movement that continues to spawn new coalitions and new activities. The large numbers of cases that were and continue to be litigated and the innovative use of law to mobilize present a paradox since it is the law that constructs the “illegality” of undocumented immigrants, providing them very limited recourse to rights claims. This paper analyzes the opportunities in existing legal doctrine for claiming rights for the undocumented. I argue that in the almost categorical acceptance of the plenary power of the Congress in immigration and the absence of a clear-cut articulation of rights for undocumented immigrants, immigrant rights advocates are faced with procedural and substantive obstacles to make legal claims. The legal opportunities that exist currently offer partial and ineffective solutions at best. I then explore what compelled legal mobilization strategies despite the lack of entitlements under immigration law and how the costs of legal strategies are mitigated by other advantages that legal mobilization provides. I suggest that activists invoked the law in various ways, not necessarily enamored by rights discourses or by an unbridled expectation in law as a means to achieve justice. The law, even with its limitations and biases, still provided avenues to curb state power and it also functioned as a symbolic, discursive, and mobilizing resource. I show that undocumented immigrants rely on legal action and rights discourse not only because of the expected diffusional effects of movements such as the civil rights and gay  rights movement but also as acts of resistance and as assertions of quasi-citizenship

Harvard Latino Law Review, Vol. 19, pp.165-201 (2016). 38p.

By Mizue Aizeki, Ghita Schwarz, Jane Shim, and Samah Sisay

Cruel by Design: Voices of Resistance from Immigration Detention, a report by the Immigrant Defense Project and the Center for Constitutional Rights, shows how the harms associated with ICE detention practices are embedded in the structures of the immigration control regime rather than a manifestation of a broken system. In doing so, it offers a summary of U.S. detention laws to illustrate how the system is designed to make it as easy as possible for the federal government to exclude and deport people. It also shows how the detention system deploys multiple tactics to undermine the ability of individuals to fight deportation. In addition, the report highlights the stories of people who’ve been held in ICE detention, and their resistance and resilience in the face of a draconian system. Piecemeal reforms alone will not be sufficient for remedying the cruelty of this system. What is ultimately required is far-reaching transformation, one aimed at ending detention as a tool of the U.S. regime of exclusion.

New York: Immigrant Defense Project and Center for Constitutional Rights, 2022.  49p.