Immigration Law Commons^™

Guide On Multisectional Responses For The Protection Of Migrants, Refugees, And Internally Displaced Persons During And After The Covid-19 Pandemic, Diego Rodriguez-Pinzon, Claudia Martin

Research Reports & White Papers

The Guide on Multisectoral Responses for the Protection of Migrants, Refugees, and Internally Displaced Persons during and after the COVID19 pandemic is an initiative of the Department of Social Inclusion of the Secretariat for Access to Rights and Equity of the Organization of American States (OAS) that offers a situational analysis and promotes a dialogue on proposals to address the particular needs of migrants, refugees, and internally displaced persons in the face of the emergency generated by COVID-19. It also seeks to define proposals with a post-pandemic perspective that provide multisectoral responses to address the needs of vulnerable populations.

This …

The Rise Of The 'Immigrant-As-Injury' Theory Of State Standing, Jennifer Lee Koh

American University Law Review

Despite the Biden Administration’s efforts to hold itself out as a humane alternative to the excesses of immigration enforcement during the Trump presidency, federal courts have prevented a number of immigration policy changes from going forward during the first half of the Biden era. States serve as the primary plaintiffs in these lawsuits, which have impacted cornerstone immigration policies such as the termination of exclusionary border policies, the restoration of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), and the application of enforcement priorities. During the 2022-23 term, the Supreme Court will hear certain states’ challenge to immigration enforcement priorities in United …

The Racial Justice Imperative To Reimagine Immigrant Children's Rights: Special Immigrant Juveniles As A Case Study, Dalia Castillo-Granados, Rachel Leya Davidson, Laila L. Hlass, Rebecca Scholtz

American University Law Review

The immigration legal system has codified and perpetuated racial violence in many ways, yet the experiences of young people of color in this system have yet to be deeply examined. This Article surfaces the distinct and varied racialized harms that children experience in the immigration system through the example of Special Immigrant Juveniles. Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS) is the only immigration status created for and limited to children. A child—defined in immigration law as someone who is under twenty-one years of age and unmarried—is eligible to seek SIJS with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) if a state court …

“By Accident Of Birth”: The Battle Over Birthright Citizenship After United States V. Wong Kim Ark, Amanda Frost

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

In theory, birthright citizenship has been well established in U.S. law since 1898, when the Supreme Court held in United States v. Wong Kim Ark that all born on U.S. soil are U.S. citizens. The experience of immigrants and their families over the last 120 years tells a different story, however. This article draws on government records documenting the Wong family's struggle for legal recognition to illuminate the convoluted history of birthright citizenship. Newly discovered archival materials reveal that Wong Kim Ark and his family experienced firsthand, and at times shaped, the fluctuating relationship between immigration, citizenship, and access to …

How A Universal Definition May Shape The Looming Climate Refugee Crisis, Alexandra Haris

Human Rights Brief

No abstract provided.

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 …

Unfinished Business: How “Split Authority” Over U.S. Asylum Adjudications Highlights The Need To Relocate The Immigration Court System To The Department Of Homeland Security, Kirsten Bickelman

Legislation and Policy Brief

No abstract provided.

Brief Of Nat’L Assoc. Of Crim. Defense Attorney & Nat’L Assoc. Of Fed’L Defenders As Amicus Curiae, Pereida V. Barr, No. 19-438 (U.S.) (Feb. 2020)., Jenny Roberts

Amicus Briefs & Court Filings

Brief of Nat’l Assoc. of Crim. Defense Attorney & Nat’l Assoc. of Fed’l Defenders as Amicus Curiae, Pereida v. Barr, No. 19-438 (U.S.) (Feb. 2020).

From Cancellation To Removal: The Protection Of Migrants Of 'Bad Character' In Australia, Lillian Robb

American University International Law Review

No abstract provided.

Ni Refugiados Ni Migrantes: La Protección Complementaria En Casos De Migrantes En Situación De Pobreza, A La Luz Del Derecho Internacional De Los Derechos Humanos, Tomás Pascual Ricke

American University International Law Review

No abstract provided.

Preventing Trafficking Through New Global Governance, Janie Chuang

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

The year 2020 marks the twentieth anniversary of the United Nations (U.N.) Trafficking Protocol-a treaty that established the foundation for global efforts to address the problem of human trafficking.' That treaty offered an early framing of the problem as a transnational crime, best addressed through aggressive prosecution of traffickers and international cooperation to that end. Since the Protocol's adoption, global antitrafficking law and policy have evolved significantly. The once near-exclusive focus on the prosecution prong of the treaty's "3Ps" approach to trafficking- focused on prosecuting trafficking, protecting trafficked persons, and preventing trafficking-has given way to an increased emphasis on victim …

Rehabilitating Our Immigration System With The Rehabilitation Act: Rejecting Video Teleconferencing And Presumptively Requiring In-Person Court Appearances As A Reasonable Accommodation For Mentally Incompetent Detainees, Cassandra H. Chee

American University Law Review

In recent years, the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), the office of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) responsible for adjudicating immigration cases, has increasingly relied on the use of video teleconferencing (VTC) in immigration court proceedings, as opposed to in-person court appearances. Citing VTC as an efficient and effective way to conduct hearings and manage its large docket backlog, EOIR has installed VTC units at its headquarters and at nearly all immigration courts, and the agency’s use of VTC has risen exponentially under the Trump Administration. Yet, VTC has been proven to harm immigration judges’ abilities to assess …

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

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & 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 …

The Myth Of Enforcing Border Security Versus The Reality Of Enforcing Dominant Masculinities, Jamie Abrams

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This essay explores the masculinities underpinnings in modern immigration law, policy, and rhetoric. Existing analysis has captured the ways in which Trump-era immigration laws, policies, and rhetoric are explicitly and implicitly packaged in alarming racism and xenophobia. These critical lenses continue a long and deeply worrisome legacy of “othering” and dehumanizing immigrants and, more broadly, marginalizing communities of color in the United States.

Outside of the immigration law lens, separate strands of scholarship and media coverage have highlighted the toxic masculinities of the Trump era. These discussions have generally focused on President Trump’s treatment of women, the gendered campaign dynamics …

Trump's Torture Legacy: Isolating, Incarcerating, And Inflicting Harm Upon Migrant Children, Brendan Lokka

American University International Law Review

No abstract provided.

What Matters More: Preserving A Fundamental Right To Privacy Or Tampering With Another's Dignity Through Searches Because Of "Reasonable Suspicion", Darianne De Leon

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Manufactured Emergencies, Robert Tsai

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

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 …

Immigration Unilateralism And American Ethnonationalism, Robert Tsai

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

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 …

Acting Differently: How Science On The Social Brain Can Inform Antidiscrimination Law, Susan Carle

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Legal scholars are becoming increasingly interested in how the literature on implicit bias helps explain illegal discrimination. However, these scholars have not yet mined all of the insights that science on the social brain can offer antidiscrimination law. That science, which researchers refer to as social neuroscience, involves a broadly interdisciplinary approach anchored in experimental natural science methodologies. Social neuroscience shows that the brain tends to evaluate others by distinguishing between "us" versus "them" on the basis of often insignificant characteristics, such as how people dress, sing, joke, or otherwise behave. Subtle behavioral markers signal social identity and group membership, …

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

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & 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 policies …

Alienating Citizens, Amanda Frost

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Denaturalization is back. In 1967, the Supreme Court declared that denaturalization for any reason other than fraud or mistake in the naturalization process is unconstitutional, forcing the government to abandon its aggressive denaturalization campaigns. For the last half century, the government denaturalized no more than a handful of people every year. Over the past year, however, the Trump Administration has revived denaturalization. The Administration has targeted 700,000 naturalized American citizens for investigation and has hired dozens of lawyers and staff members to work in a newly created office devoted to investigating and prosecuting denaturalization cases.

Using information gathered from responses …

Defining Detention: The Intervention Of The European Court Of Human Rights In The Detention Of Involuntary Migrants, Anita Sinha

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This Article examines the European Court of Human Rights' intervention in the detention of involuntary migrants. It analyzes the use of "carceral migration control" in response to a migration "crisis," and argues that the actual crisis in the region is one of politics and policies rather than the magnitude of migration. It explores the consequences of a crisis moniker for migration, including shortsighted migration policies, entrenched caricatures of migrants as threatening, and excessive emphasis on punitive rather than humanitarian responses. Responding to migration as a crisis has led states in Europe and elsewhere to shift the movement of people across …

Why The Legal Strategy Of Exploiting Immigrant Families Should Worry Us All, Jamie Abrams

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This article applies a family law lens to explore the systemic and traumatic effects of modern laws and policies on immigrant families. A family law lens widens the scope of individuals harmed by recent immigration laws and policies to show why all families are affected and harmed by shifts in state power, state action, and state rhetoric. The family law lens reveals a worrisome shift in intentionality that has moved the state from a bystander to family-based immigration trauma to an incendiary agent perpetrating family trauma.

Modern immigration laws and policies are deploying legal and political strategies that intentionally sever …

Broken Bones And Pepper Spray: The State-Sanctioned Abuse Of Immigrant Juveniles In Custody, Alex Bruce

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Dillon's Rule: A Check On Sheriff's Authority To Enter 287(G) Agreements, Gregory Taylor

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Equity In Contemporary Immigration Enforcement: Defining Contributions And Countering Criminalization, Jayesh Rathod, Alia Al-Khatib

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Since the 2016 Presidential election, discussions of immigration policy and enforcement have taken center stage in the public debate. In contrast to the Obama administration, which had articulated specific priorities for removal, the Trump administration has significantly expanded its enforcement targets. Indeed, high-level officials have confirmed that virtually anyone who is in the country without authorization is susceptible to removal. To make its case for enhanced immigration enforcement, the current administration has deployed familiar tropes regarding immigrant criminality and dangerousness. This rhetoric, operationalized through varied structures of criminalization, has shrunk the pool of individuals who can argue against removal, notwithstanding …

Criminalization And The Politics Of Migration In Brazil, Jayesh Rathod

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

In May 2017, the government of Brazil enacted a new immigration law, replacing a statute introduced in 1980 during the country’s military dictatorship with progressive legislation that advances human rights principles and adopts innovative approaches to migration management. One of the most notable features of the new law is its explicit rejection of the criminalization of migration, and its promotion of efforts to regularize undocumented migrants. Although the law itself is new, the values embedded in the law reflect recent trends in Brazilian immigration policy, which has embraced legalization, and has generally resisted the use of criminal law to punish …

Think Of An Elephant? Tweeting As "Framing" Executive Power, Fernando R. Laguarda

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

2017 Symposium Discussion: The Life Of An Immigration Attorney, Cori Alonso-Yoder

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Brief Of International Law Scholars And Non-Governmental Organizations As Amici Curiae In Support Of Appellees In International Refugee Assistance Project V. Trump, 2017 U.S. 4th Cir., Amanda Frost

Amicus Briefs & Court Filings

No abstract provided.