Immigration Law Commons^™

Keynote Address: Community Over Constitution, Riddhi Mukhopadhyay

Seattle University Law Review

In this keynote address, Riddhi Mukhopadhyay challenges the veneration of the U.S. Constitution by highlighting its origins in exclusion and its continued failure to protect marginalized communities. Drawing from her experience in civil legal aid and gender justice, she argues that the Constitution was drafted to consolidate power among white, wealthy men and continues to reflect that legacy through racial, gender, and class-based inequities. While acknowledging the significance of constitutional amendments and landmark cases, Mukhopadhyay emphasizes that meaningful change has always come from community-led action, not top-down reform. Additionally, Mukhopadhyay calls on lawyers and legal advocates to center community, practice …

Lethal Immigration Enforcement, Abel Rodríguez

Faculty Publications

Increasingly, U.S. immigration law and policy perpetuate death. As more people become displaced globally, death provides a measurable indicator of the level of racialized violence inflicted on migrants of color. Because of Clinton-era policies continued today, deaths at the border have reached unprecedented rates, with more than two migrant deaths per day. A record 853 border crossers died last year, and the deadliest known transporting incident took place in June 2022, with fifty-one lives lost. In addition, widespread neglect continues to cause loss of life in immigration detention, immigration enforcement agents kill migrants with virtual impunity, and immigration law ensures …

Going Forward: The Role Of Affirmative Action, Race, And Diversity In University Admissions And The Broader Construction Of Society, Steven W. Bender

Seattle University Law Review

The third annual EPOCH symposium, a partnership between the Seattle University Law Review and the Black Law Student Association took place in late summer 2023 at the Seattle University School of Law. It was intended to uplift and amplify Black voices and ideas, and those of allies in the legal community. Prompted by the swell of public outcry surrounding ongoing police violence against the Black community, the EPOCH partnership marked a commitment to antiracism imperatives and effectuating change for the Black community. The published symposium in this volume encompasses some, but not all, the ideas and vision detailed in the …

Hidden In Plain Sight: Redefining The Field Of National Security, Aziza Ahmed

Faculty Scholarship

Throughout his campaign for presidency, Trump called for a ban on Muslims entering the United States. As President, he kept his word. Only days after he took office, the new administration released the first version of the Executive Order: Protecting the Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States. The first Executive Order, however, did not say the word Muslim. Instead, it listed only Muslim-majority countries as necessary for restrictions on entry. The Executive Order also trafficked in stereotypes about Muslims, such as the need to ban people who engage in acts of "bigotry or hatred," including honor killings. …

What Do We Do With You: How The United States Uses Racial-Gendered Immigrant Labor To Inform Its Immigrant Inclusion-Exclusion Cycle, Tori Delaney

University of Cincinnati Law Review

No abstract provided.

Tracing The Roots Of A Poisonous Tree: On The Origins And Impact Of Criminal Terminology In A Civil Apprehension Scheme, Shani Mahiri King, Nicole Silvestri Hall

Articles (Current Faculty)

Language is powerful. It can affect how we think about and treat groups of people. Poor language choices have a massive impact on immigration law, an area of the law that determines how groups of perceived “outsiders” are classified and regulated. Language and bias in judicial opinions have been studied, but less research has been done on poor language choices in immigration statutes.

This Comment focuses on the harmful effects of poor language choices in immigration statutes, including the criminal terminology “arrest” and “warrant” in civil immigration apprehension statutes 8 U.S.C. Sections 1226 and 1357. Two fundamental problems arise when …

The Multi-Dimensional Relationship Between Immigration Policies And Mexican Migrant Women: A Cycle Of Violence, Vulnerabilities, And Sobreviviencia, Jasmine Perales, Jasmine Perales

CMC Senior Theses

Thousands of migrants have died at the United States/Mexico border. This paper analyzes how the current crisis at the border came to be, specifically focusing on the experiences of Mexican migrant women. An analysis of race, racial scripts, and illegality shows how these inform immigration policies and negatively impact migrants. Decades worth of draconian immigration policies have militarized the border and continued to reinforce negative racial scripts of migrants. By centering the testimonies of Mexican migrant women, their structured vulnerabilities come to the forefront as a direct result of immigration policies. Reform of the immigration system needs to occur to …

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.

Discretion And Disobedience In The Chinese Exclusion Era, Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia

Faculty Scholarship

This Article examines the use of prosecutorial discretion from its first recorded use in the nineteenth century to protect Chinese subject to deportation, following to its implication in modern day immigration policy. A foundational Supreme Court case, known as Fong Yue Ting, provides a historical precedent for the protection of a category of people as well as a deeper history of prosecutorial discretion in immigration law. This Article also sharpens the policy argument to protect political activists through prosecutorial discretion and forces consideration for how modern immigration policy should respond to historical exclusions and racialized laws. This Article centers its …

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.

Decolonizing Indigenous Migration, Angela R. Riley, Kristen A. Carpenter

Publications

As global attention turns increasingly to issues of migration, the Indigenous identity of migrants often remains invisible. At the U.S.-Mexico border, for example, a significant number of the individuals now being detained are people of indigenous origin, whether Kekchi, Mam, Achi, Ixil, Awakatek, Jakaltek or Qanjobal, coming from communities in Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala and other countries. They may be leaving their homelands precisely because their rights as Indigenous Peoples, for example the right to occupy land collectively and without forcible removal, have been violated. But once they reach the United States, they are treated as any other migrants, without regard …

The Political (Mis)Representation Of Immigrants In Voting, Ming H. Chen, Hunter Knapp

Publications

Who is a member of the political community? What barriers to inclusion do immigrants face as outsiders to this political community? This Essay describes several barriers facing immigrants and naturalized citizens that impede their political belonging. It critiques these barriers on the basis of immigrants and foreign-born voters having rights of semi-citizenship. By placing naturalization backlogs, voting restrictions, and reapportionment battles in the historical context of voter suppression, it provides a descriptive and normative account of the political misrepresentation of immigrants.

The Political (Mis)Representation Of Immigrants In The Census, Ming Hsu Chen

Publications

Who is a member of the political community? What barriers to inclusion do immigrants face as outsiders to this political community? This article describes several barriers facing immigrants that impede their political belonging. It critiques these barriers not on the basis of immigrants’ rights but based on their rights as current and future members of the political community. This is the second of two Essays. The first Essay focused on voting restrictions impacting Asian American and Latino voters. The second Essay focuses on challenges to including immigrants, Asian Americans, and Latinos in the 2020 Census. Together, the Essays critique the …

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 …

Migration As Reparation: Climate Change And The Disruption Of Borders, Carmen G. Gonzalez

Faculty Publications & Other Works

This article examines the legal and moral basis for migration as a form of reparation for the harms inflicted on the states and peoples of the Global South through climate change and through centuries of predatory economic policies. Using Central American migration to the United States as a case study, the article explains that susceptibility to climate change is a function of two variables: exposure and social and economic vulnerability. High-emitting affluent states are disproportionately responsible for Central America’s exposure to climate change due to their historic and current greenhouse gas emissions, their unwillingness to curb these emissions, and their …

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.

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 …

'Race, Racism, And American Law': A Seminar From The Indigenous, Black, And Immigrant Legal Perspectives, Eduardo R.C. Capulong, Andrew King-Ries, Monte Mills

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Flagrant racism has characterized the Trump era from the onset. Beginning with the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump has inflamed long-festering racial wounds and unleashed White supremacist reaction to the nation’s first Black President, in the process destabilizing our sense of the nation’s racial progress and upending core principles of legality, equality, and justice. As law professors, we sought to rise to these challenges and prepare the next generation of lawyers to succeed in a different and more polarized future. Our shared commitment resulted in a new course, “Race, Racism, and American Law,” in which we sought to explore the roots …

Child Migrants And America’S Evolving Immigration Mission, Shani M. King

UF Law Faculty Publications

This Article explores the many challenges—legal and otherwise—that child migrants face as they attempt to navigate the complex web of courts, laws, and shifting political landscapes to become naturalized United States citizens, while putting these challenges in the context of an immigration system that has long been shaped by politics of exclusion and xenophobia that have shaped immigration law and policy in the United States for over one-hundred years. Such an investigation comes at a time when the issue of immigration in the United States is increasingly complex and contested. As the Trump administration mulls over new prototypes for a …

The Intersection Of Race, Bond, And "Crimmigration" In The United States Immigration Detention System, Tremaine Hemans

University of the District of Columbia Law Review

The United States ("U.S.") Supreme Court's recent decision in Jennings v. Rodriguez' has potentially opened another avenue for people of color to become entangled in the U.S.' predatory immigration system, through the denial of bail hearings. Denial of periodic bond hearings ensures that many detainees in immigration facilities will be held indefinitely until these detainees' cases are adjudicated. In Jennings, the Court held that detained aliens do not have a right to periodic bond hearings even if they are detained for prolonged periods of time, due to the language of the mandatory and discretionary detention statutes at §§ 1225(b)(1)-(2) and …

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, …

Immigration And Blackness, Karla M. Mckanders

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

There is a long history of the intersection of immigration, race, and civil rights in America. Immigration laws have operated in a manner to maintain homogeneity to the exclusion of immigrants of color. Immigration laws throughout America’s history have traditionally utilized fear and exclusion to define what America should look like and have privileged some immigrant’s over others.

Separate But (Un)Equal: Why Institutionalized Anti-Racism Is The Answer To The Never-Ending Cycle Of Plessy V. Ferguson, Maureen Johnson

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Bureaucracy As The Border: Administrative Law And The Citizen Family, Kristin Collins

Faculty Scholarship

This contribution to the symposium on administrative law and practices of inclusion and exclusion examines the complex role of administrators in the development of family-based citizenship and immigration laws. Official decisions regarding the entry of noncitizens into the United States are often characterized as occurring outside of the normal constitutional and administrative rules that regulate government action. There is some truth to that description. But the historical sources examined in this Article demonstrate that in at least one important respect, citizenship and immigration have long been similar to other fields of law that are primarily implemented by agencies: officials operating …

Crimmigration: The Missing Piece Of Criminal Justice Reform, Yolanda Vazquez

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

Over the last decade, a new push for criminal justice reform has taken hold. While the moral and fiscal costs have been exorbitant over the last forty years, failing state budgets and bipartisan recognition of the “broken” system have finally caused legislatures, politicians, and advocates to reassess the costs and benefits of the criminal justice system. Breaking the “tough on crime/soft on crime” binary, the “smart on crime” motto has become a helpful tool in reform efforts aimed at reducing the number of individuals incarcerated and ensuring its fairness, regardless of race and socioeconomic status. Little attention, however, has been …

Reframing The Archive: Vietnamese Refugee Narratives In The Post-9/11 Period, Mai-Linh Hong

Faculty Journal Articles

This article considers how recent narratives about Vietnamese refugees engage with the Vietnam War’s visual archive, particularly iconic photographs from the war and ensuing “boat people” crisis, and contribute to present-day discourses on American militarism and immigration. The article focuses on two texts, a National Public Radio special series about a US naval ship (2010) and Thanhha Lai’s Inside Out & Back Again (2011), which recounts a Vietnamese child’s refugee passage. By refiguring famous photojournalistic images from the war, the radio series advances a familiar rescue-and-gratitude narrative in which the US military operates as a care apparatus, exemplifying a cultural …

Independence And Immigration, Amanda Frost

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Diario De Perla Jimenez, Brenda Dorantes

World Languages and Cultures

The aim of this project is to present the effect of the immigration issue in the United States, with a direct focus in San Luis Obispo, and including a spread of intercultural knowledge between the Hispanic and the Caucasian community. Through a fictional short story, the manifestation of these ideas will relate to current events occurring in our society today. These events focus primarily on immigration in California, deportation issues, socioeconomic issues in Mexico, and the cultural barrier seen in Mexican and American cultures; expressed through the main character: a young college student named Perla.

My primary goal in completing …

Unseen Exclusions In Voting And Immigration Law, César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.