Law Commons^™

Relentless Pursuits: Reflections Of An Immigration And Human Rights Clinician On The Past Four Years, Sarah Paoletti

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Local Elected Officials’ Receptivity To Refugee Resettlement In The United States, Robert Shaffer, Lauren E. Pinson, Jonathan A. Chu, Beth A. Simmons

All Faculty Scholarship

Local leaders possess significant and growing authority over refugee resettlement, yet we know little about their attitudes toward refugees. In this article, we use a conjoint experiment to evaluate how the attributes of hypothetical refugee groups influence local policymaker receptivity toward refugee resettlement. We sample from a novel, national panel of current local elected officials, who represent a broad range of urban and rural communities across the United States. We find that many local officials favor refugee resettlement regardless of refugee attributes. However, officials are most receptive to refugees whom they perceive as a strong economic and social fit within …

A 6-3 Supreme Court Could Allow The Government To Openly Discriminate In Its Policies, Katherine A. Shaw, Leah Litman

Online Publications

Over the past few days, the Supreme Court has agreed to hear challenges to hot-button Trump administration policies involving the border wall, an attempt to exclude noncitizens from the census breakdown used for allocating seats in Congress and limits on who can apply for asylum from Mexico.

Legal Protections For Environmental Migrants: Expanding Possibilities And Redefining Success, Jayesh Rathod

Working Papers

This working paper describes international and domestic efforts to enact legal protections for environmental migrants, with attention to Latin America, and examines why efforts to craft a comprehensive international instrument to address this phenomenon have yet to succeed. It details factors contributing to this impasse, including: the lack of an existing framework; the inherent complexity and variability of environmental migration; the trend towards restrictive migration policies; and the lack of a clear institutional leader at the international level. Citing the limits of an exclusive focus on the creation of a new international instrument, the paper also points to the need …

Revisiting The New Politics Of Immigration, Catherine Dauvergne

All Faculty Publications

This article follows from the workshop that Professor Mireille Paquet organized in Montreal in June 2018, to discuss my book, The New Politics of Immigration and the End of Settler Soci- eties (Cambridge, 2016; Dauvergne 2016). In relation to this event and the articles of this spe- cial issue, this paper embarks on revisiting The New Politics of Immigration, now more than three after it first appeared in print. In this paper, I reflect on whether my arguments stand up to the test presented by the events of the past three years. Recent events lead me to nuance some of …

Law Library Blog (August 2020): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

The Libertarian Case For Immigration (And Against Trump), Peter Margulies

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Iccpr, Non-Self-Execution, And Daca Recipients' Right To Remain In The United States, Timothy E. Lynch

Faculty Works

The United States is a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Article 12.4 states, “No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of the right to enter his own country.” Citizens clearly enjoy the rights of Article 12.4, but this Article demonstrates that this right reaches beyond the citizenry. Using customary methods of treaty interpretation, including reference to the ICCPR’s preparatory works and the jurisprudence of the Human Rights Committee, I demonstrate that Article 12.4 also forbids states from deporting long-term resident non-citizens – both documented and undocumented – except under the rarest circumstances. As a result, …

The Legal Obligation Of The Us Government To Protect Asylum Seekers, Joy Karges

Honors Theses

Immigration has always been an important topic of conversation in the United States and around the globe, but the recent surge of migrants at the US southern border has centered the debate around what is often referred to as “illegal immigration”. Some scholars argue that our detention facilities treat migrants as though they were criminals while others say detention facilities are the best way to keep migrants from making the journey to the US and threatening our national security. The purpose of this study is to untangle some of the misunderstandings surrounding immigration from Central America. By assessing some of …

Law School News: Fall 2020 Reopening: The Faq 07-09-2020, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

"She Was Surprised And Furious": Expatriation, Suffrage, Immigration, And The Fragility Of Women's Citizenship, 1907-1940, Felice Batlan

All Faculty Scholarship

This article stands at the intersection of women’s history and the history of citizenship, immigration, and naturalization laws. The first part of this article proceeds by examining the general legal status of women under the laws of coverture, in which married women’s legal existence was “covered” by that of their husbands. It then discusses the 1907 Expatriation Act, which resulted in women who were U.S. citizens married to non-U.S. citizens losing their citizenship. The following sections discuss how suffragists challenged the 1907 law in the courts and how passage of the Nineteenth Amendment—and with it a new concept of women’s …

The Supreme Court Rules That Trump’S Daca Rescission Doesn’T Pass Muster, Peter Margulies

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Law School News: Will Sheehan '20 Selected For Prestigious Immigration Fellowship 06-17-2020, Michael M. Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Rwu Law News: The Newsletter Of Roger Williams University School Of Law 06-2020, Roger Williams University School Of Law, Michael M. Bowden, Katie Mulvaney

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Law School News: Distinguished Service Professor: Deborah Gonzalez 05-20-2020, Michael M. Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Law School News: Rwu Law Professors, Aclu Seek Release For All Ice Detainees At Wyatt 05-18-2020, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Presidential Ideology And Immigrant Detention, Catherine Y. Kim, Amy Semet

Journal Articles

In our nation’s immigration system, a noncitizen charged with deportability may be detained pending the outcome of removal proceedings. These individuals are housed in remote facilities closely resembling prisons, with severe restrictions on access to counsel and contact with family members. Given severe backlogs in the adjudication of removal proceedings, such detention may last months or even years.

Many of the noncitizens initially detained by enforcement officials have the opportunity to request a bond hearing before an administrative adjudicator called an Immigration Judge (IJ). Although these IJs preside over relatively formal on-the-record hearings and are understood to exercise “independent judgement,” …

Trump’S Coronavirus Immigration Order Is A Restriction In Search Of A Rationale, Peter Margulies

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Law School News: Law Student Of The Year! 04-03-2020, Michael M. Bowden, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Donald Trump, Twitter, And Islamophobia: The End Of Dignity In Presidential Rhetoric About Terrorism, Gabriel Rubin

Department of Justice Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Donald Trump’s rhetoric is markedly different than that of just about every other American president. Trump’s speeches on terrorism and his related Islamophobia and anti-immigrant rhetoric are examined in this chapter. Trump’s use of Twitter and view of the presidency as a “permanent campaign” keep his followers in a state of near-permanent mobilization. Trump uses the rhetoric of fear to push his followers against Muslims and immigrants by linking terrorism to both groups. As Jeffrey Tulis opines, Trump is America’s first demagogue. This chapter highlights how Trump’s demagoguery and novel method for communicating with his followers has framed the terror …

Asylum Update: Ninth Circuit Deals Two Defeats To The Trump Administration, Peter Margulies

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Crimmigrant Nations: Resurgent Nationalism And The Closing Of Borders [Table Of Contents], Robert Koulish, Martje Van Der Woude

Law

As the distinction between domestic and international is increasingly blurred along with the line between internal and external borders, migrants—particularly people of color—have become emblematic of the hybrid threat both to national security and sovereignty and to safety and order inside the state. From building walls and fences, overcrowding detention facilities, and beefing up border policing and border controls, a new narrative has arrived that has migrants assume the risk for government sponsored degradation, misery, and death. Crimmigrant Nationsexamines the parallel rise of anti-immigrant sentiment and right-wing populism in both the United States and Europe to offer an unprecedented …

An Empirical Study Of Political Control Over Immigration Adjudication, Catherine Y. Kim, Amy Semet

Journal Articles

Immigration plays a central role in the Trump Administration’s political agenda. This Article presents the first comprehensive empirical assessment of the extent to which immigration judges (IJs), the administrative officials charged with adjudicating whether a given noncitizen will be deported from the United States, may be influenced by the presidential administration’s political preferences.

We constructed an original dataset of over 830,000 removal proceedings decided between January 2001 and June 2019 after individual merits hearings. First, we found that every presidential administration—not just the current one—disproportionately appointed IJs with backgrounds in the former Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Department of Homeland …

Pajamas For Change, Alexander R. Kohn

Georges Lieber Essay Contest on Resistance

I created a protest called the "Where Are the Children Project" to bring attention to the immigrant children held in detention centers. Throughout the project I was able to see how much others cared about helping these children gain better living conditions, and I was able to learn about leadership and resistance. My values helped drive me into action, and the importance of what I was working towards helped me become more confident. After months of protests, the Homestead Detention Center where reports of maltreatment had been especially high was closed, but my work to improve the rights of immigrants …

The Right To Health In Immigration Detention During The Covid-19 Pandemic: An Examination Of Federal And International Law, Alaina Dye

Center for Health Law Policy and Bioethics

This article examines the United States’ response to the severe impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) in immigration detention centers and considers the United States’ obligations to the vulnerable population of immigrant detainees. This article argues that the COVID-19 pandemic further demonstrates the United States’ lack of guaranteed health care for immigrant detainees and deportees despite international recognition of the human rights to health and life. The United States violates international law when immigrant detainees’ human rights are disregarded by lack of appropriate access to health care during a global pandemic. This article recognizes that discrimination against immigrants under the Trump …

U.S. Border Expulsions Further Jeopardize Asylum Seekers And Unaccompanied Minors In The Time Of Covid-19, Evan Harris

Center for Health Law Policy and Bioethics

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a public health order on March 20, 2020, restricting people seeking asylum in the United States, as well as unaccompanied non-citizen children attempting to cross into the United States, from accessing legal protections guaranteed to them under U.S. and international law.1 Under the order, such individuals are instead immediately expelled from the country in an effort to protect border facilities and the citizenry of the United States from COVID-19.

2 As the order reasons, these immediate expulsions minimize the introduction of persons into “congregate settings” at border facilities and thereby reduce …

Darkside Discretion In Immigration Cases, Shoba Wadhia

Journal Articles

"Darkside Discretion" refers to a situation where the noncitizen satisfies the statutory criteria set by Congress to be eligible for remedy but is denied by an adjudicator in the exercise of discretion. Imagine a woman who arrived in the United States six months ago who meets her burden of proving she is a refugee based on a fear of persecution by the government in her home country because of her religious beliefs, but who is denied asylum for discretionary reasons. This kind of decision exposes the "darkside" of discretion because it reflects how the government uses the tool of discretion …

The Case Against Chevron Deference In Immigration Adjudication, Shoba Wadhia, Christopher Walker

Journal Articles

The Duke Law Journal’s fifty-first annual administrative law symposium examines the future of Chevron deference—the command that a reviewing court defer to an agency’s reasonable interpretation of an ambiguous statute the agency administers. In the lead article, Professors Kristin Hickman and Aaron Nielson argue that the Supreme Court should narrow Chevron’s domain to exclude interpretations made via administrative adjudication. Building on their framing, this Article presents an in-depth case study of immigration adjudication and argues that this case against Chevron has perhaps its greatest force when it comes to immigration. That is because much of Chevron’s theory for congressional delegation …

Immigration Policy As A Defense Of White Nationhood, Juan F. Perea

Faculty Publications & Other Works

President Trump's vilification and expulsion of undocumented Latino migrants is only the latest episode of the mass expulsion of Latinos. This essay places Trump's border enforcement policies into historical context as a defense of white national identity. Despite many asserted justifications for this mistreatment of migrants and refugees, the only justification that survives scrutiny is the need to reassure anxious whites that their racial status is being defended.

Publicly Charged: A Critical Examination Of Immigrant Public Benefit Restrictions, Cori Alonso-Yoder

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Since the early days of the Trump Administration, reports of the President’s controversial and dramatic immigration policies have dominated the news. Yet, despite the intensity of this coverage, an immigration policy with far broader implications for millions of immigrants and their U.S.- citizen family members has dodged the same media glare. By expanding the definition of who constitutes a “public charge” under immigration law, the Administration has begun a process to restrict legal immigration and chill the use of welfare benefits around the country. The doctrine of public charge exclusion developed from colonial times and has reemerged in Trump Administration …