Law Commons^™

Against Monetary Primacy, Yair Listokin, Rory Van Loo

Faculty Scholarship

Every passing month of high interest rates increases the chances of massive job cuts and a devastating recession that still might come if the Fed maintains interest rates at their current levels for long enough. Recessions impose not only widespread short-term pain but also lifelong harms for many, as vulnerable populations and those who start their careers during a downturn never fully recover. Yet hiking interest rates is the centerpiece of U.S. inflation-fighting policy. When inflation is high, the Fed raises interest rates until inflation is tamed, regardless of the sacrifice that ensues. We call this inflation-fighting paradigm monetary primacy. …

Immigration Law's Missing Presumption, Fatma Marouf

Faculty Scholarship

The presumption of innocence is a foundational concept in criminal law but is completely missing from quasi-criminal immigration proceedings. This Article explores the relevance of a presumption of innocence to removal proceedings, arguing that immigration law has been designed and interpreted in ways that disrupt formulating any such presumption to facilitate deportation. The Article examines the meaning of “innocence” in the immigration context, revealing how historically racialized perceptions of guilt eroded the notion of innocence early on and connecting the missing presumption to persistent associations between people of color and guilt. By analyzing how a presumption of innocence is impeded …

Gender-Based Religious Persecution, Pooja R. Dadhania

Faculty Scholarship

People fleeing gender-based violence in the home face an uphill battle when seeking asylum in the United States. Through the lens of public and private spheres, this Article explores the underutilized religion ground for asylum for cases involving gender-based violence in the home—i.e., the private sphere. This Article argues that if an individual imposes a patriarchal practice on an asylum seeker in the private sphere and justifies that practice using religion, the asylum seeker’s resistance to that practice should constitute religious expression.

The religion ground protects individuals who are persecuted because of their religious beliefs and religious expression. It typically …

Immigration Detention Abolition And The Violence Of Digital Cages, Sarah R. Sherman-Stokes

Faculty Scholarship

The United States has a long history of devastating immigration enforcement and surveillance. Today, in addition to more than 34,000 people held in immigration detention, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) surveils an astounding 296,000 people under its “Alternatives to Detention” program. The number of people subjected to this surveillance has grown dramatically in the last two decades, from just 1,339 in 2005. ICE’s rapidly expanding Alternatives to Detention program is marked by “digital cages,” consisting of GPS-outfitted ankle shackles and invasive phone and location tracking. Government officials and some immigrant advocates have categorized these digital cages as a humane “reform”; …

Regional Immigration Enforcement, Fatma Marouf

Faculty Scholarship

Regional disparities in immigration enforcement have existed for decades, yet they remain largely overlooked in immigration law scholarship. This Article theorizes that bottom-up pressure from states and localities, combined with top-down pressures and policies established by the President, produce these regional disparities. The Article then provides an empirical analysis demonstrating enormous variations in how Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s twenty-four field offices engage in federal enforcement around the United States. By analyzing data related to detainers, arrests, removals, and detention across these field offices, the Article demonstrates substantial differences between field offices located in sanctuary and anti-sanctuary regions, as well as …

Embracing Crimmigration To Curtail Immigration Detention, Pedro Gerson

Faculty Scholarship

Immigration advocates have long objected to both the constitutionality and conditions of immigration detention. However, legal challenges to the practice have been largely unsuccessful due to immigration law’s “exceptionality.” Placing recent litigation carried out against immigration detention during the COVID-19 pandemic within the context of the judiciary’s approach to immigration, this Article argues that litigation is an extremely limited strategic avenue to curtail the use of immigration detention. I then argue that anti-immigration detention advocates should attempt to incorporate their agenda into criminal legal reform and decarceration efforts. This is important for both movements. Normatively, immigration detention raises comparable issues: …

Reimagining Sovereignty To Protect Migrants, Pooja R. Dadhania

Faculty Scholarship

The concept of sovereignty in international law allows states to exclude and expel most categories of migrants, subject only to very narrow exceptions from international human rights and refugee law. Inverting the state sovereignty paradigm traditionally used to exclude migrants, this Essay reimagines sovereignty to protect migrants by drawing on the international law doctrine of state responsibility. The doctrine of state responsibility requires states to remedy the consequences of their actions in violation of international law. States that violate the sovereignty of other states, more specifically their territorial integrity or political independence, and thereby cause forced migration should have an …

Title 42, Asylum, And Politicising Public Health, Michael Ulrich, Sondra S. Crosby

Faculty Scholarship

President Biden has continued the controversial immigration policy of the Trump era known as Title 42, which has caused harm and suffering to scores of asylum seekers under the guise of public health.1 The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) ordered the policy in March 2020 with the stated purpose of limiting the spread of the coronavirus into the U.S.; though, CDC and public health officials have admitted this policy has no scientific basis and there is no evidence it has protected the public.2,3 Instead, the impetus behind the policy appears to be a desire to keep out or …

Public Health And The Power To Exclude: Immigrant Expulsions At The Border, Sarah R. Sherman-Stokes

Faculty Scholarship

We are presently in the midst of a crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border, as Courts, and indeed the Biden Administration, are struggling to manage thousands of immigrants waiting to seek asylum in the midst of a global pandemic. Beginning in March of 2020, against the advice of public health experts, the U.S. Government closed the southern U.S.-Mexico border, disproportionately impacting would-be asylum seekers from Central America, who are now immediately expelled from the United States should they reach the border under a process known as “Title 42.” Not only do these expulsions lack a legitimate public health rationale, but they …

Immigration Detention As An Obstacle To Decarceration, Pedro Gerson

Faculty Scholarship

Criminal legal reform and measures to reduce carceral populations have received increasing media and public policy attention nationwide. These efforts have mainly ignored a parallel development: the consistent rise in the use of immigration detention over the last decade. This Article bridges that gap by arguing that ongoing efforts to decarcerate states and localities may be foiled by immigration detention. This argument relies on three different descriptive claims. First, much scholarly work has shown the extent to which vested interests have hampered criminal legal reform; these same interests could look to immigration detention as an alternative protection. Second, the extent …

The Boston Medical Center Immigrant Task Force: An Alternative To Teaching Immigration Law To Health Care Providers, Sondra S. Crosby, Lily Sonis, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

As healthcare providers engage in the politics of reforming and humanizing our immigration and asylum “system” it is critical that they are able to refer their patients whose health is directly impacted by our immigration laws and policies to experts who can help them navigate the system and obtain the healthcare they need.

Gambling And The U.S. Immigration Laws, Robert Jarvis

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Beyond Emissions: Migration, Prisons, And The Green New Deal, Wyatt Sassman, Danielle C. Jefferis

Faculty Scholarship

The Green New Deal is a bold resolution that asks us to envision climate policy beyond emissions reductions and pollution controls. The proposal seeks to reduce environmental impacts, including by dramatically reducing carbon emissions, while supporting domestic manufacturing, unionized labor, sustainable agriculture, and social equity. The Biden Administration has expressed support for the Green New Deal as “a crucial framework for meeting the climate challenges we face,” and the proposal has influenced the Administration’s early actions to reduce carbon emissions. How can the Green New Deal’s framework guide climate policy beyond emissions reductions, and who should be a part of …

Racial Purges, Robert L. Tsai

Faculty Scholarship

In a two-year period, 1885-86, over 168 communities in America forcibly expelled Chinese residents from their midst. This essay, inspired by historian Beth Lew-Williams's book, THE CHINESE MUST GO, investigates the nineteenth-century purges of Chinese residents that occurred throughout the American west. I make three arguments. First, these acts of racial and political terror complicate our understanding of racial violence in America. Many of the actions were denounced, but they were also surprisingly effective in forcing business and political leaders to support the indefinite suspension of Chinese migration. Perpetrators faced almost no legal repercussions, and unlike for freed persons, racial …

Third Country Deportation, Sarah R. Sherman-Stokes

Faculty Scholarship

The large-scale deportation of noncitizens from the United States is not new. However, the speed, and secrecy, by which many of these deportations are carried out is unprecedented. Deportations are, increasingly, executed not through a legal court process, but rather, extrajudicially—in detention centers and at border crossings, outside the purview of judges or neutral adjudicators. One kind of this “shadow deportation” is what I term “third country deportation”—the removal of noncitizens to a country other than that designated by an Immigration Judge, after relief to the designated country has been granted, and after the court proceeding has concluded.

This article …

Paper Terrorists: Independence Movements And The Terrorism Bar, Pooja R. Dadhania

Faculty Scholarship

This Article explores the application of the terrorism bar in immigration law to noncitizens who have participated in an independence movement. It proposes a uniform standard that immigration adjudicators can use to determine whether a foreign entity is a state in order to promote accurate applications of the terrorism bar. The terrorism bar in the Immigration and Nationality Act is broad — it can bar most forms of immigration relief, including asylum, and reaches far beyond ordinary definitions of terrorism. For example, the terrorism bar can block immigration relief for noncitizens who nonviolently supported a militia fighting for independence against …

Covid-19 And Prisoners’ Rights, Gregory Bernstein, Stephanie Guzman, Maggie Hadley, Rosalyn M. Huff, Alison Hung, Anita N.H. Yandle, Alexis Hoag, Bernard E. Harcourt

Faculty Scholarship

As COVID-19 continues to spread rapidly across the country, the crowded and unsanitary conditions in prisons, jails, juvenile detention, and immigration detention centers leave incarcerated individuals especially vulnerable. This chapter will discuss potential avenues for detained persons and their lawyers seeking to use the legal system to obtain relief, including potential release, during this extraordinary, unprecedented crisis.

The Past As Present, Unlearned Lessons And The (Non-) Utility Of International Law, Susan M. Akram

Faculty Scholarship

The contemporary moment provides an acute illustration of the dangers of historical amnesia—as if the Trump Administration’s policies of exclusion, extremist nationalism, and presidential imperialism were singular to ‘now,’ and entirely reversible in the next election. This Article argues to the contrary; that we have been down this road before, and the current crisis in immigration and refugee policies is the inevitable development of trends of racism, including anti-Arab, anti-Muslim racism and xenophobia, that have only become normalized by the populist resurgence of Trumpism. If this premise is correct—that we are experiencing a culmination of a historical trajectory—what lessons from …

Subfederal Immigration Regulation And The Trump Effect, Huyen Pham, Pham Hoang Van

Faculty Scholarship

The restrictive changes made by the Trump presidency on U.S. immigration policy have been widely reported: the significant increases in both interior and border enforcement, the travel ban prohibiting immigration from majority-Muslim countries, and the termination of the DACA program. Beyond the traditional levers of federal immigration control, this administration has also moved aggressively to harness the enforcement power of local and state police to increase interior immigration enforcement. To that end, the administration has employed both voluntary measures (like signing 287(g) agreements deputizing local police to enforce immigration laws) and involuntary measures (threatening to defund jurisdictions with so-called “sanctuary” …

Immigration Unilateralism And American Ethnonationalism, Robert L. Tsai

Faculty Scholarship

This paper arose from an invited symposium on "Democracy in America: The Promise and the Perils," held at Loyola University Chicago School of Law in Spring 2019. The essay places the Trump administration’s immigration and refugee policy in the context of a resurgent ethnonationalist movement in America as well as the constitutional politics of the past. In particular, it argues that Trumpism’s suspicion of foreigners who are Hispanic or Muslim, its move toward indefinite detention and separation of families, and its disdain for so-called “chain migration” are best understood as part of an assault on the political settlement of the …

El Gran Ausente De Las Discusiones Laborales: La Migración, Jennifer Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Reparations For Central American Refugees, Sarah R. Sherman-Stokes

Faculty Scholarship

In the midst of vicious and unrelenting attacks on Central American asylum seekers in the United States, this Article seeks to understand historic and present-day patterns of animus and discrimination facing this group of refugees, and to propose solutions. This Article begins by examining decades of prejudice faced by Central American asylum seekers, as well as attempts to right those wrongs through litigation, legislation, and the creation of Temporary Protected Status (TPS). Next, this Article identifies the predominant push and pull factors driving Central American refugees north—and the U.S. role in creating them. The Article then lays out the impact …

Manufactured Emergencies, Robert L. Tsai

Faculty Scholarship

Emergencies are presumed to be unusual affairs, but the United States has been in one state of emergency or another for the last forty years. That is a problem. The erosion of democratic norms has led to not simply the collapse of the traditional conceptual boundary between ordinary rule and emergency governance, but also the emergence of an even graver problem: the manufactured crisis. In an age characterized by extreme partisanship, institutional gridlock, and technological manipulation of information, it has become exceedingly easy and far more tempting for a President to invoke extraordinary power by ginning up exigencies. To reduce …

The Sanctuary Of Prosecutorial Nullification, Zohra Ahmed

Faculty Scholarship

In the aftermath of the 2016 election, the shortcomings of existing sanctuary protections came sharply into focus.¹ Historically, cities enacted sanctuary protections to extricate their law enforcement agencies from activities related to federal immigration enforcement. In sanctuary cities, local government agencies are typically restricted from sharing information with federal immigration authorities or from cooperating in apprehending individuals targeted for removal. ² After the White House issued an Executive Order (EO) in late January 2017, many immigrant rights advocates recognized that external facing policies that proscribed direct cooperation would not suffice. ³ The EO announced that Immigration and Customs Enforcement …

Investing In Low-Wage Jobs Is The Wrong Way To Reduce Migration, Jennifer Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Invoking Federal Common Law Defenses In Immigration Cases, Fatma Marouf

Faculty Scholarship

This Article argues that we should take a deeper look at the applicability of federal common law defenses in immigration cases. In the rare cases where noncitizens attempt to raise common law defenses, such arguments tend to be dismissed offhand by immigration judges simply because removal proceedings are technically civil, not criminal. Yet many common-law defenses may be raised in civil cases. Additionally, immigration proceedings have become increasingly intertwined with the criminal system. After examining how judges already rely on federal common law to fill in gaps in the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), this Article proposes three categories of …

Free Trade, Immigrant Workers, And Employment Discrimination, Angela D. Morrison

Faculty Scholarship

This article reframes the outward-looking perspective on workers’ rights provisions in free trade agreements. It argues that those provisions provide an opportunity to reinforce the workplace rights of noncitizen workers in the United States. Scholars and worker advocates have criticized recent free trade agreements for their lack of enforcement mechanisms and protections for workers in developing countries. They argue that this has encouraged a race to the bottom on the part of multi-national corporations who relocate to developing countries to take advantage of cheap labor costs, thereby costing U.S. workers’ jobs.

This article shifts the focus. Instead, it argues that …

Mobilizing A Community: The Effect Of President Trump's Executive Orders On The Country's Interior, Enid Trucios-Haynes, Mariana Michael

Faculty Scholarship

Utilizing his executive powers, one of President Trump’s first actions denied entry into the U.S. to individuals from seven different countries. This action immediately set into motion many relief efforts undertaken by attorneys around the nation and showcased lawyers’ work on high impact cases through suits brought by organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union. While the media attention focused on these efforts in coastal cities at international airports, cities in the interior United States struggled to gather resources and effectively provide legal assistance to affected individuals. The participatory action research (PAR) model emerges as a means to bridge …

Barack Obama's Emancipation Proclamation: An Essay In Memory Of Judge Richard D. Cudahy, Jack M. Beermann

Faculty Scholarship

In a case involving whether illegal immigrants were protected under federal labor law, Judge Richard Cudahy, observed that illegal immigrants are often at the mercy of unscrupulous employers and that immigrations laws provide employers “with a powerful tool for unfair and oppressive treatment of migrant labor.” There are millions of people in the United States who are vulnerable to exploitation in the workplace due to their illegal immigration status. In 2012 and 2014, the Obama administration announced programs designed to provide limited security to some of the millions of illegal immigrants present in the United States. These programs are, in …

Federalism And The State Police Power: Why Immigration And Customs Enforcement Must Stay Away From State Courthouses, George Bach

Faculty Scholarship

The Trump Administration’s rhetoric and increased immigration enforcement actions have raised the level of fear in immigrant communities. The increased enforcement has included having United States Immigrant and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents appear at state and local courthouses to detain undocumented immigrants when they arrive for court. This presence has had an adverse effect on domestic violence victims who are immigrants, as they fear encountering immigrations officials at the courthouse. In El Paso, for example, agents detained a woman who was bringing a case of domestic violence against her abuser. There were claims that ICE was tipped off about the …