Law Commons^™

Lethal Immigration Enforcement, Abel Rodríguez

Faculty Publications

Increasingly, U.S. immigration law and policy perpetuate death. As more people become displaced globally, death provides a measurable indicator of the level of racialized violence inflicted on migrants of color. Because of Clinton-era policies continued today, deaths at the border have reached unprecedented rates, with more than two migrant deaths per day. A record 853 border crossers died last year, and the deadliest known transporting incident took place in June 2022, with fifty-one lives lost. In addition, widespread neglect continues to cause loss of life in immigration detention, immigration enforcement agents kill migrants with virtual impunity, and immigration law ensures …

Preventing Predatory Alienation By High-Control Groups: The Application Of Human Trafficking Laws To Groups Popularly Known As Cults, And Proposed Changes To Laws Regarding Federal Immigration, State Child Marriage, And Undue Influence, Robin Boyle Laisure

Faculty Publications

In this article, I summarize some of the significant legal developments in the United States that have taken place within the past year. First, United States v. Raniere was a criminal case launched against the founder of a purported self-help organization, NXIVM, and several of his associates. The Raniere case established precedent for using the human-trafficking statutes, among other grounds, to pursue justice for victims of high-demand groups. Second, the number of asylum seekers is increasing annually, and some of these undocumented immigrants are escaping from their countries-of-origin cults, gangs, and other extremist groups. However, once they arrive in the …

Co-Opting Coronavirus, Assailing Asylum, Ashley B. Armstrong

Faculty Publications

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) issued an Order on March 26, 2020, under Title 42, Section 265 of the Public Health Service Act, in the name of combatting the spread of coronavirus. The Order has been called the “Asylum Ban” because it effectively has sealed the southern border to protection-seekers, resulting in the pushback of nearly 400,000 asylees and unaccompanied children. This Article argues that the Trump administration has contravened the rule of law by using the coronavirus pandemic as a convenient pretext to end asylum in the U.S., and by violating the rights of protection-seekers. In doing so, …

You Shall Not Pass! How The Dublin System Fueled Fortress Europe, Ashley B. Armstrong

Faculty Publications

This Article examines the recent proliferation of walls and fences in Europe, fueled by the Dublin Regulation’s failure to distribute responsibility for asylum seekers equitably among European states. Legal scholarship does not lack literature bemoaning the failures of the E.U.’s Dublin Regulation—which dictates, generally, that the country where an asylum seeker first enters the E.U. is responsible for processing his or her claim for protection. Yet scholarship on border walls and fences, and what induces European states to construct them, is not prominent in the literature. The critiques lodged against the Dublin Regulation have primarily focused on its futility and …

Enabling The Best Interests Factors, Adrián E. Alvarez

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

For over a century, state courts and other child welfare agencies in the United States have been applying the “best interests of the child standard” to all decision-making concerning children. The standard is also enshrined within the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC)—a treaty that every nation in the world has ratified except the United States. Notwithstanding its widespread adoption in family law, the standard is, with only a few exceptions, noticeably missing from American laws and policies pertaining to children in the immigration system.

There is a rich literature arguing that children should enjoy special …

Legislating Morality: Moral Theory And Turpitudinous Crimes In Immigration Jurisprudence, Abel Rodríguez, Jennifer A. Bulcock

Faculty Publications

Congress could have framed the country’s immigration policies in any number of ways. In significant part, it opted to frame them in moral terms. The crime involving moral turpitude is among the most pervasive and pernicious classifications in immigration law. In the Immigration and Nationality Act, it is virtually ubiquitous, appearing everywhere from the deportability and mandatory detention grounds to the inadmissibility and naturalization grounds. In effect, it acts as a gatekeeper for those who wish to enter and remain in the country, obtain lawful permanent residence, travel abroad after admission, or become United States citizens. With limited exceptions, noncitizens …

Chutes And Ladders: Nonrefoulement And The Sisyphean Challenge Of Seeking Asylum In Hungary, Ashley B. Armstrong

Faculty Publications

Recent developments in Hungary’s asylum law and policy demonstrate an extraordinary subversion of the refugee rights regime and serve as a case study of how a State can pervert its national laws to shirk its international and regional treaty obligations. This Article has two major goals. First, it traces the devolution of Hungarian asylum law from the height of the 2015 refugee crisis to July 2018 through a critical lens. Second, it argues that Hungary is in violation of its nonrefoulement obligations, which prohibits States from returning refugees to countries where they will likely face harm. This Article focuses its …

Tips For Safety Planning For Children Of Undocumented Parents, Jennifer Baum

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

In 2013, more than 5 million children in the United States (over 7 percent of the total U.S. child population) were living with at least one undocumented parent, according to the Migration Policy Institute. The overwhelming majority of these children (80 percent) were U.S. citizens. The Washington Post reported that more than half a million of these children's parents have in fact been deported since 2009. That's a lot of U.S. children living day to day with the sudden loss, or risk of sudden loss, of a parent through deportation.

Who Says "I Do"? Reviewing Judith Butler & Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Who Sings The Nation-State? Language, Politics, Belonging (2007), Noa Ben-Asher

Faculty Publications

This Book Review offers an analogy between two forms of resistance to legal discrimination by marginalized minorities: singing the national anthem in Spanish on the streets of Los Angeles in the spring of 2006 by undocumented immigrants, and possible future public marriage ceremonies by LGBT people and other marriage outlaws. Based on the conceptual grounds laid by Judith Butler and Gayatri Spivak, and earlier by Hannah Arendt, the Review uses an analogy to the public singing of the anthem in Spanish in order to argue that the performance of public marriage ceremonies by LGBT people and other marriage outlaws may …

Decentering The Firm: The Limited Liability Company And Low-Wage Immigrant Women Workers, Miriam A. Cherry

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

Imagine the following scenario: a group of immigrant women clean houses and offices in the suburbs of a large northeastern city. These workers speak languages other than English. Therefore they depend on an intermediary, another immigrant who has been in the United States for a longer period of time, to solicit jobs, negotiate schedules, and communicate with customers. Although this “intermediary” does not actually perform any of the cleaning work, the intermediary’s “cut,” or share of the income generated, is substantial. The immigrant workers are typically paid a low wage, often averaging below the minimum wage set by the …