Immigration Law Commons^™

Having Decency Towards Immigrants Requires The Abolition Of For-Profit Detention Centers, Ariadna Quinares Navarrete

Seattle Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Changemakers: From The Classroom To The Courtroom: Miguel Garcia, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Law School News: From Classroom To Courtroom 11-10-2022, Michelle Choate

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

The Suspension Clause After Department Of Homeland Security V. Thuraissigiam, Jonathan Hafetz

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

In June 2020, in Department of Homeland Security v. Thuraissigiam, the Supreme Court of the United States rejected a constitutional challenge to Congress’s decision to eliminate habeas corpus jurisdiction over legal challenges to expedited removal orders by noncitizens in federal detention.

In Thuraissigiam, U.S. border patrol stopped the petitioner, Vijayakumar Thuraissigiam, a Sri Lankan national of Tamil ethnicity, shortly after he crossed the U.S.-Mexico border without inspection or an entry document. The petitioner asserted that he was fleeing persecution in his home country and sought asylum in the United States. The asylum officer concluded that Thuraissigiam had …

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 …

Rwu Law News: The Newsletter Of Roger Williams University School Of Law 04-2021, Michael M. Bowden, Barry Bridges, Political Roundtable

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Law School News: Professor Gonzalez Is 2020 Rhode Island Lawyer Of The Year 01/11/21, Barry Bridges, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Practical Abolition: Universal Representation As An Alternative To Immigration Detention, Matthew Boaz

Scholarly Articles

A federally funded universal representation program can serve as a practical first step toward the abolition of immigration detention and the other harsh enforcement mechanisms that are utilized today. While abolition is typically an ideology espoused by a small subsection of the general population, its purpose can be achieved through a less partisan and broader reaching ideal -- fiscal efficiency and responsibility. By demonstrating that the provision of counsel and other wrap around services is significantly less costly than immigration detention, while also showing that providing counsel and wrap around services is an extremely effective way to ensure compliance, this …

Thirteenth Amendment Litigation In The Immigration Detention Context, Jennifer Safstrom

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This Article analyzes how the Thirteenth Amendment has been used to prevent forced labor practices in immigration detention. The Article assesses the effectiveness of Thirteenth Amendment litigation by dissecting cases where detainees have challenged the legality of labor requirements under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. Given the expansion in immigration detention, the increasing privatization of detention, and the significant human rights implications of this issue, the arguments advanced in this Article are not only currently relevant but have the potential to shape ongoing dialogue on this subject.

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.

Barriers To Due Process For Indigent Asylum Seekers In Immigration Detention, Cindy S. Woods

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.

Alternatives To Immigration Detention, Fatma E. Marouf

Fatma Marouf

The United States places over 440,000 people each year in immigration detention, far more than any other country in the world. This Article argues that there are compelling humanitarian and financial reasons to utilize more alternatives to detention. It examines the strengths and limitations of existing alternatives, including the need to develop more community-based case management programs and to rely less on electronic monitoring. The Article then sets forth several legal arguments under the Constitution, Rehabilitation Act, and international human rights law for requiring greater consideration of alternatives to detention.

Learning In "Baby Jail": Lessons From Law Student Engagement In Family Detention Centers, Lindsay M. Harris

Journal Articles

Between 2014 and 2017, more than 40 law schools and likely well over 1000 law students engaged in learning within immigration family detention centers. The Trump Administration’s “zero tolerance” policy and implementation of wide-scale family separation in 2018 led to increased involvement by professors and students in the constantly shifting landscape of immigration detention. As the detention of immigrant families becomes increasingly entrenched, this article hits the pause button and assesses the benefits and challenges of the various approaches to, and proposes some principles for, law student engagement in this crisis lawyering in immigration detention centers, for families, and beyond.

Alternatives To Immigration Detention, Fatma E. Marouf

Faculty Scholarship

The United States places over 440,000 people each year in immigration detention, far more than any other country in the world. This Article argues that there are compelling humanitarian and financial reasons to utilize more alternatives to detention. It examines the strengths and limitations of existing alternatives, including the need to develop more community-based case management programs and to rely less on electronic monitoring. The Article then sets forth several legal arguments under the Constitution, Rehabilitation Act, and international human rights law for requiring greater consideration of alternatives to detention.

Arbitrary Detention? The Immigration Detention Bed Quota, Anita Sinha

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

When President Obama took office in 2009, Congress through appropriations linked the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) funding to “maintaining” 33,400 immigration detention beds a day. This provision, what this Article refers to as the bed quota, remains in effect, except now the mandate is 34,000 beds a day. Since 2009, DHS detentions of non-citizens have gone up by nearly 25 percent. To accommodate for this significant spike over a relatively short period of time, the federal government has relied considerably on private prison corporations to build and operate immigration detention facilities.

This Article takes a comprehensive look at …

The Grapes Of Wrath: On The Health Of Immigration Detainees, Stacey A. Tovino

Scholarly Works

This Article challenges the lack of health care provided to individuals in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) custody. As background, many immigration detainees are physically and emotionally vulnerable at the time of initial confinement due to a history of torture and trauma, which may include human trafficking, sexual violence, political oppression, psychosocial trauma, and acculturative stress. Detention can exacerbate preexisting vulnerabilities and contribute to severe physical and mental illness as well as death. Between October 2003 and October 2015, 153 individuals died while in ICE custody. Although most proposals for detainee health reform borrow heavily from constitutional law, international …

Silent Protest And The Art Of Paper Folding: The Golden Venture Paper Sculptures At The Museum Of Chinese In America, Sandra Cheng

Publications and Research

Housed in the Museum of Chinese in America is the Fly to Freedom collection of paper art, which were produced by a traditional folk method of Chinese paper folding. The 123 paper works were created by detainees of the Golden Venture, a freighter used to smuggle undocumented immigrants into the U.S. On the evening of June 6, 1993, the ship ran aground off the Rockaways in New York City and nearly 300 migrants, gaunt from the four-month ordeal at sea, poured out of the cramped windowless hold of the vessel. Several drowned that night, a few escaped, but the majority …

"Immigrants Are Not Criminals": Respectability, Immigration Reform, And Hyperincarceration, Rebecca Sharpless

Rebecca Sharpless

The Efficacy Of Indefinite Detention: Assessment Of Immigration Case Law In Kiyemba V. Obama, Hansdeep Singh

University of Massachusetts Law Review

This note discusses the potential indefinite detention, also called preventative detention, of the Uighur detainees. Until early 2010, the U.S. Government had been unable to resettle seventeen Uighurs for over 5 years. In 2009, the Supreme Court, granted certiorari on the issue of whether federal courts have the authority to ―order the release of prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay 'where the Executive detention is indefinite and without authorization in law, and release into the continental United States is the only possible effective remedy.‘ However, on March 1, 2010, the Supreme Court vacated and remanded the case to the United States …

Rethinking Immigration’S Mandatory Detention Regime: Politics, Profit, And The Meaning Of “Custody”, Philip L. Torrey

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Immigration detention in the United States is a crisis that needs immediate attention. U.S. immigration detention facilities hold a staggering number of persons. Widely believed to have the largest immigration detention population in the world, the United States detained approximately 478,000 foreign nationals in Fiscal Year 2012. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the agency responsible for immigration enforcement, boasts that the figure is “an all-time high.” In some ways, these numbers are unsurprising, considering that the United States incarcerates approximately one in every one hundred adults within its borders—a rate five to ten times higher than any other Westernized …

Immigration Is Different: Why Congress Should Guarantee Access To Counsel In All Immigration Matters, Careen Shannon

University of the District of Columbia Law Review

This article represents a pipe dream. It envisions an America where no one would be detained, deported, and exiled without the opportunity to meaningfully challenge the grounds for such drastic action against them. Specifically, it envisions an America in which Congress would act in the interest of justice to ensure that foreign nationals held in immigration detention-no, let's call it what it is: prison-while awaiting the opportunity to challenge removability before an Immigration Judge were guaranteed the right to counsel. Similarly, it imagines that even in a time of fiscal crisis and political dysfunction, a Congress that enacts some type …

Making Civil Immigration Detention “Civil,” And Examining The Emerging U.S. Civil Detention Paradigm, Mark Noferi

Mark L Noferi

In 2009, the Obama Administration began to reform its sprawling immigration detention system by asking the question, “How do we make civil detention civil?” Five years later, after opening an explicitly-named “civil detention center” in Texas to public criticism from both sides, the Administration’s efforts have stalled. But its reforms, even if fully implemented, would still resemble lower-security criminal jails.

This symposium article is the first to comprehensively examine the Administration’s efforts to implement “truly civil” immigration detention, through new standards, improved conditions, and greater oversight. It does so by undertaking the first descriptive comparison of the U.S.’s two largest …

"These Illegals": Personhood, Profit, And The Political Economy Of Punishment In Federal-Local Immigration Enforcement Partnerships, Daniel L. Stageman

Publications and Research

Contemporary popular discourse linking immigration and immigrants to crime has proved extremely difficult to dislodge, despite clear evidence that immigrant labor provides broad and direct economic benefits to a significant proportion of the US population. The criminalizing discourse directed at immigrants may in part be functional, by leading to restrictionist immigration policies and practices and subjecting immigrants to intensified economic exploitation.

This study examines the economic context in which state and local governments adopt restrictionist immigration policies and practices, and implicates the political economy of punishment (Rusche and Kirchheimer, Punishment and social structure. New York: Columbia University Press, 1939) …

The Road To S.B. 1070: How Arizona Became Ground Zero For The Immigrants' Rights Movement And The Continuing Struggle For Latino Civil Rights In America, Kristina M. Campbell

Journal Articles

When Arizona Governor Janice K. Brewer signed the Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act - better known as SB 1070 - into law in April 2010, the world was taken aback not only by the State of Arizona’s brazen attempt to regulate immigration at the state level, but by the manner in which it pledged to do so. By giving state and local law enforcement officials the responsibility to detain persons that they have “reasonable suspicion” to believe are unlawfully present, the Arizona immigration law was not only branded “the toughest immigration law in the country,” but it …

Think Outside The Cell: Are Binding Detention Standards The Most Effective Strategy To Prevent Abuses Of Detained Illegal Aliens?, Federico D. Burlon

Political Science Honors Projects

In the last twenty years the U.S. government has increasingly utilized detention to control illegal immigration. This practice has become controversial because it has caused numerous in-custody abuses and deaths of immigrants, asylum seekers, refugees and even citizens. Immigrant rights advocates have called for the passage of binding detention standards to prevent in-custody abuses. This thesis’s policy analysis reveals, however, that while they may finesse the practice of immigration detention, such binding standards would be ineffective in protecting immigrants’ rights. Instead this policy analysis calls for and explains the feasibility of discontinuing the practice of mass immigrant detention.

Gender, Law, And Detention Policy: Unexpected Effects On The Most Vulnerable Immigrants, Carla L. Reyes

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

The United States immigration system is especially difficult for children to navigate. Advocates commonly argue that this difficulty stems largely from the poor fit resulting from the application of a system designed for adults to the reality of the child immigrant experience. Advocacy efforts, including those that resulted in changes to detention policy and substantive immigration law regarding Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC), therefore focus on modifying the system to recognize children as subjects, rather than objects, of immigration law. This article argues that the present efforts to streamline the immigration detention and relief experience for UACs by combating adult-centered bias …

The Trend Toward The Criminalization And Detention Of Asylum Seekers, Sharon A. Healey

Human Rights Brief

No abstract provided.