Law Commons^™

Border Enforcement As State-Created Danger, Jenny-Brooke Condon, Lori A. Nessel

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

A woman seeks refuge at the U.S. border, but U.S. officials force her to wait for her asylum hearing in Mexico where a police officer later stalks and rapes her. A father and child suffer unbearable trauma after U.S. officials separate them under a policy aimed at deterring migration. A formerly healthy family loses a loved one to the coronavirus while forced to wait at an unsanitary, makeshift tent city in Mexico after fleeing for safety to the United States. For the people impacted by U.S. border policies, the southern border is a dangerous place—it is the site of …

Introduction, Rosemary Salomone

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

This issue of the St. John’s Law Review includes several Articles that were initially presented at the Law Review’s Fall 2022 virtual symposium. The symposium commemorated the 40th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Plyler v. Doe as a starting point for discussing current immigration law in the United States. It was dedicated in memory of Professor Michael A. Olivas, who held the William B. Bates Distinguished Chair in Law (Emeritus) and was the Director of the Institute for Higher Education Law and Governance at the University of Houston Law Center. Professor Olivas, a passionate advocate of …

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 …

Rising Up Without Pushing Down: Lessons Learned From The Suffragettes' Anti-Immigrant Rhetoric, Kit Johnson

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

American suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton famously wrote: “We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men and women are created equal.” Yet when suffragettes spoke of “all” men and women, they were clear about exceptions. Immigrants did not qualify. Indeed, in her own address at the First Women’s Rights Convention, held in Seneca Falls, New York, in July 1848, Stanton said that “to have . . . ignorant foreigners . . . fully recognized, while we ourselves are thrust out from all the rights that belong to citizens, it is too grossly insulting to the dignity of woman …

Nazi Germany's Race Laws, The United States, And American Indians, Robert J. Miller

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

Most Americans would be shocked to learn that in the 1920s and 1930s Adolf Hitler and Nazi scholars, lawyers, and officials were studying United States law while developing Germany’s policies and laws concerning Jews and the conquest of Eastern Europe. Most Americans would also be surprised that, as the leaders of the Third Reich were turning racist ideas into official German policies, Nazis were carefully studying United States federal Indian law and state laws that discriminated against Indian nations and American Indians.

Special Education No Man's Land, Adrián E. Alvarez

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

Since 2014, unaccompanied immigrant children have migrated to the United States in staggering numbers. The vast majority come from the Northern Triangle countries of Central America—El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras—and many are fleeing some of the highest homicide rates in the world. Immigration lawyers have highlighted many problems with the federal regime that cares for these children before they are released to family members or other adults living in the United States while their immigration cases move forward. Yet there is one group of unaccompanied minors that is not even on the radar of many advocates: unaccompanied children with …

Contract Rights Under The I-864 Affidavit Of Support: Seventh Circuit's Reasoning Binds Courts' Hands In A Shifting Landscape For Public Charge Doctrine, John T. Burger

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

Courts are currently split on the issue of whether a mitigation of damages defense is available to sponsors to the Affidavit. Leading cases, including Liu, rely upon the unique nature of the form to assert that such defenses are precluded. This Note will argue that the I-864 should be treated under the same principles as a typical common-law contract. Part I of this Note will trace the history of the I-864 form, primarily focusing on the legislation and case law rendering the form an enforceable contract. Part II will discuss Liu v. Mund, focusing extensively on the United States …

Fragmenting The Community: Immigration Enforcement And The Unintended Consequences Of Local Police Non-Cooperation Policies, Natashia Tidwell

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

Part I traces the historical roots of the relationship between local police and federal immigration authorities, beginning with the changes in enforcement strategy precipitated by the September 11, 2001 attacks and leading up to the launch of S-Comm. The federal government's increased reliance on local police to supplement its internal enforcement efforts has raised several Tenth Amendment concerns as the states struggle to define the proper scope of their "inherent authority" to act in immigration matters, with officials in some so-called sanctuary cities insisting that their inherent authority to enforce federal immigration law is commensurate with the sovereign right …