International Humanitarian Law Commons^™

Justice For Venezuela: The Human Rights Violations That Are Isolating An Entire Country, Andrea Matos

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

Abstract forthcoming.

A Human Rights Crisis Under Our Roof, Aglae Eufracio

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

Abstract forthcoming.

What An Ethics Of Discourse And Recognition Can Contribute To A Critical Theory Of Refugee Claim Adjudication, David Ingram

Philosophy: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Thanks to Axel Honneth, recognition theory has become a prominent fixture of critical social theory. In recent years, he has deployed his recognition theory in diagnosing pathologies and injustices that afflict institutional practices. Some of these institutional practices revolve around specifically juridical institutions, such as human rights and democratic citizenship, that directly impact the lives of the most desperate migrants. Hence it is worthwhile asking what recognition theory can add to a critical theory of migration. In this paper, I argue that, although its contribution to a critical theory of migration is limited, it nonetheless carves out a unique body …

What An Ethics Of Discourse And Recognition Can Contribute To A Critical Theory Of Refugee Claim Adjudication: Reclaiming Epistemic Justice For Gender-Based Asylum Seekers, David Ingram

Philosophy: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Abstract: Using examples drawn from gender-based asylum cases, this chapter examines how far recognition theory (RT) and discourse theory (DT) can guide social criticism of the judicial processing of women’s applications for protection under the Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (1951) and subsequent protocols and guidelines put forward by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). I argue that these theories can guide social criticism only when combined with other ethical approaches. In addition to humanitarian and human rights law, these theories must rely upon ideas drawn from distributive, compensatory, and epistemic justice. Drawing from recent …

Trump Expelled Refugees Against Cdc Advice. As Covid Subsides, Why Won't Biden Admit Them?, Lindsay M. Harris, Sarah Sherman-Stokes

UDC Law Faculty in the News

No abstract provided.

The Role Of Nations-State In Protecting And Supporting Internally Displaced Persons, Daisy Byers

Master's Theses

The rising increase of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) has become a global problem. There are over 40 million internally displaced people globally, and 15.9 million are displaced in Africa. These displacements come into place due to war/conflict, corruption, massive human rights violations, natural disasters, urban renewal projects (at the hands of powerful nations such as America, China, France, UK, etc.), and large-scale development projects. According to UNHCR, refugees are people who have international cross-border. In contrast, internally displaced persons must stay within their own country and stay under the protection of their government, even if the government is the reason …

An Inferentially Robust Look At Two Competing Explanations For The Surge In Unauthorized Migration From Central America, Nick Santos

Dissertations

The last 8 years have seen a dramatic increase in the flow of Central American apprehensions by the U.S. Border Patrol. Explanations for this surge in apprehensions have been split between two leading hypotheses. Most academic scholars, immigrant advocates, progressive media outlets, and human rights organizations identify poverty and violence (the Poverty and Violence Hypothesis) in Central America as the primary triggers responsible. In contrast, while most government officials, conservative think tanks, and the agencies that work in the immigration and border enforcement realm admit poverty and violence may underlie some decisions to migrate, they instead blame lax U.S. immigration …

Seeking Asylum In A Modern Society: Global Responses To Latin American Migration, Rebecca Dickinson

Senior Honors Projects

The United States is no stranger to asylum seekers and refugees. The most famous seaport in the country houses a 305-foot-tall statue of a woman bearing a torch with words from the poem The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus etched at her feet: “‘Give me your tired, your poor, /Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.’”^[1] The Statue of Liberty is a symbolic representation of open arms to immigrants from all walks of life. But if everyone is welcome, why do so few actually gain entrance?

US interventionism policies in the 20th century have defined the lives of millions …

The Effects Of Covid-19 On A Damaged System: How The Pandemic Exacerbated The Violation Of International Human Rights In The United States Immigration Detention Facilities, Alyson Sutton

Law in a Post-Pandemic World

This blog post highlights several issues within immigration detention facilities in the United States that violate International Human Rights Laws and how the pandemic further exacerbated them.

Asylum Under Attack: Restoring Asylum Protections In The United States, Lindsay M. Harris

Journal Articles

The U.S. asylum system has endured four years of systematic attack. The Trump Administration attempted to dismantle the United States’ system to protect asylum seekers through changes to case law, executive orders, presidential proclamations, internal agency guidance and sweeping regulatory changes, among other measures. The system largely ground to a halt after the Trump Administration co-opted the coronavirus public health crisis to effectively close the southern border to asylum seekers with its March 2020 Centers for Disease Control order. This catastrophic order was not even the last in a long line of the Trump Administration’s efforts since assuming power to …

Asylum Attorney Burnout (Model Survey And Additional Survey Responses), Lindsay M. Harris, Hillary A. Mellinger

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Beyond Emissions: Migration, Prisons, And The Green New Deal, Wyatt Sassman, Danielle C. Jefferis

Faculty Scholarship

The Green New Deal is a bold resolution that asks us to envision climate policy beyond emissions reductions and pollution controls. The proposal seeks to reduce environmental impacts, including by dramatically reducing carbon emissions, while supporting domestic manufacturing, unionized labor, sustainable agriculture, and social equity. The Biden Administration has expressed support for the Green New Deal as “a crucial framework for meeting the climate challenges we face,” and the proposal has influenced the Administration’s early actions to reduce carbon emissions. How can the Green New Deal’s framework guide climate policy beyond emissions reductions, and who should be a part of …

Reforming And Clarifying Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, Brad Reynolds

Journal of Legislation

Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (“SIJS” or “SIJ status”) is a form of immigration relief for undocumented minor children who have been abused, abandoned, and/or neglected by one or both parents. Most applicants for SIJ status hail from the “Northern Triangle” countries of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala, and have travelled thousands of miles, often alone and in dangerous conditions, to seek protection in the United States that one or both of their parents are unable or unwilling to provide them in their country of origin, typically from gangs.1 To ensure that the best interests of these children are protected, the …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Judicial Power—Immigration-Style, Jayanth K. Krishnan

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Throughout this current global pandemic, but of course, even before, former President Trump advocated enacting restrictive immigration measures. Under his tenure, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) assumed enhanced judicial authority and issued decisions that often adversely affected noncitizens. However, in June 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down one of the DHS's most well-known initiatives, which sought to end the 'DACA' program. The Court held that the agency could not do so arbitrarily and had to comply with the requirements set forth in the Administrative Procedure Act.

Yet, there have been other areas where the DHS, particularly through its …

Transit States To Destination Nations: Mexican And Moroccan Asylum Policies, Stephanie Evans

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Much of the literature surrounding immigration and asylum analyzes the policies adopted by highly developed nations like the United States and countries in the European Union. However, as these nations' policies become increasingly restrictive, more migrants are turning towards neighboring nations that are easier to access but that have less developed immigration and asylum systems. Mexico and Morocco are two such nations. Historically, each has been a transit state--a nation that migrants traveled through in order to reach other states. However, both Mexico and Morocco are becoming destination nations. Social science scholarship has analyzed and compared changes in Mexico's and …

Global Apathy And The Need For A New, Cooperative International Refugee Response, Emily Gleichert

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

While an increasing number of nations move toward isolationist, nationalist policies, the number of refugees worldwide is climbing to its highest levels since World War II. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is the international body tasked with protecting this population. However, the office’s traditional solutions for refugees – local integration, resettlement in a third country, and voluntary repatriation – have mostly eluded refugees who spend an average of twenty years in exile. The limitations UNHCR’s structure imposes on the office, specifically in its ability to fund its operations and compel nations to act, have contributed to its …

Enough Is As Good As A Feast, Noah C. Chauvin

Seattle University Law Review

Ipse Dixit, the podcast on legal scholarship, provides a valuable service to the legal community and particularly to the legal academy. The podcast’s hosts skillfully interview guests about their legal and law-related scholarship, helping those guests communicate their ideas clearly and concisely. In this review essay, I argue that Ipse Dixit has made a major contribution to legal scholarship by demonstrating in its interview episodes that law review articles are neither the only nor the best way of communicating scholarly ideas. This contribution should be considered “scholarship,” because one of the primary goals of scholarship is to communicate new ideas.

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Protecting The Flores And Hutto Settlements: A Look At The History Of Migrant Children Detention And Where Immigration Policies Are Headed, Megan Kauffman

Immigration and Human Rights Law Review

The Flores and Hutto settlement agreements established basic standards the government must meet when detaining minor children. This comment discusses the history and importance of the Flores and Hutto agreement and the current administration’s attempt to limit and circumvent both agreements.

Refugee Perspectives On Transitioning From Higher Education In The United States To Life Post-Graduation, Jessica S. Clarkson

Capstone Collection

In 2019, only 3% of refugees had access to higher education. Using qualitative research methods of surveys and semi-structured interviews, this study explores the perspectives of two student affairs professionals and six individuals with formal refugee status granted by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and in possession of a refugee travel document, who have not yet been resettled and are pursuing higher education in the United States. It focuses on the students’ preparation for and transition to life post-graduation, since UNHCR supposes that pursuing higher education abroad may be a viable ‘complementary pathway’ toward resettlement, self-reliance, and/or …

Refugees And Human Rights In French-Speaking Europe, Jacob Kang

French Summer Fellows

This paper seeks to explain the manner in which French-speaking European States, namely France, Switzerland, and Belgium, treat asylum seekers. To do so, we will first examine, the philosophical underpinnings of European conceptions of the state, of personhood, and of human rights. In doing so, we move to understand cultural attitudes towards asylum seekers through European philosophers such as Rousseau and Kant. The second aspect, the legal aspect, will explain the manner through which the aforementioned philosophies are reflected through governance in each of the states. Finally, we will examine the demographic profiles of the refugees and perform an outcomes …

“[Don’T] Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor...” A Study On The Trump Administration’S Unprecedented Reforms To The U.S. Refugee Admissions Program And Their Implications, Savannah Day

Honors Theses

From 2017 to 2020, the Trump administration cut United States refugee admissions tenfold. These reforms come unprecedented to the 40-year-old resettlement program (USRAP). By critically reviewing literature on this topic as well as conducting eight original interviews with five national nonprofits contracted by the Department of State to do refugee resettlement casework, this study sought to identify the implications of the Trump administration’s reforms to the program. Once implications were identified, I used the applied frameworks of program model as well as Michael Worth’s sociological and political science theories of American nonprofit-government relations to better inform and guide the study. …

The Honduran Exodus: Understanding The Migrant Crisis At The Southwest Border, Ashley Saul

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

No abstract provided.

Child Marriage In The U.S.: Loopholes In State Marriage Laws Perpetuate Child Marriage, Sarah Ochieng

Immigration and Human Rights Law Review

The practice of child marriage is often discussed in the context of developing countries and many people find it unthinkable that child marriage also occurs in developed countries such as the United States of America. However, child marriage is a serious problem in the United States that affects thousands of children each year. This comment reviews the loopholes in state marriage laws. Part II considers the scope of child marriage as a human rights violation and the effects of child marriage. It also provides a background of the loopholes in state marriage laws, and a focus on the marriage laws …

Rodriguez V. Swartz: Civil Lawsuit Immunity In Border Shootings, Alexis Woolison

Immigration and Human Rights Law Review

When federal agents exhibit conduct that violates the United States Constitution, the Supreme Court has held that those agents should be held civilly liable for their actions, as shown by its decision in Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. Applicable constitutional violations include those which infringe on any individuals’ constitutional rights. This includes violations of the constitutional rights of noncitizens. Although the Supreme Court disfavors expansion of Bivens claims and has only extended this remedy twice, in Davis v. Passman and Carlson v. Green, the Ninth Circuit Court recently approved such expansion in a …

Grounds For Asylum: How Victims' Rights Laws Confer Particular Social Group Status To Domestic Violence Victims, Jordan Cotleur

Immigration and Human Rights Law Review

Despite an uptake in legislation criminalizing domestic violence since the 1990’s, women in Latin America still face the highest rates of gender-based and domestic violence of any region in the world. In Central America, two-thirds of female homicide victims are killed because of their status as a woman (also known as “femicide”) and half of women face this fate at the hands of a current or former partner. The violence perpetuates at such an alarming rate because investigations into gender-based violence are nearly non-existent in the region. In 2016, it was reported that up to ninety-eight percent of cases involving …

Finding Refuge: Blockchain Technology As The Solution To The Syrian Identification Crisis, Victoria Heather Barbino

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Trafficking To The Rescue?, Julie A. Dahlstrom

Faculty Scholarship

Since before the dawn of the #MeToo Movement, civil litigators have been confronted with imperfect legal responses to gender-based harms. Some have sought to envision and develop innovative legal strategies. One new, increasingly successful tactic has been the deployment of federal anti-trafficking law in certain cases of domestic violence and sexual assault. In 2017, for example, victims of sexual assault filed federal civil suits under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (“TVPRA”) against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. Plaintiffs argued that the alleged sexual assault conduct amounted to “commercial sex acts” and sex trafficking. Other plaintiffs’ lawyers have similarly invoked trafficking …

Fifty States, But No Room For The Stateless, In Atlas Of The Stateless: Facts And Figures About Exclusion And Displacement (Ulrike Lauerhass Et Al. Eds, 2020), David C. Baluarte

Books and Chapters

“Give me your tired, your poor / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free...” says a plaque on the Statue of Liberty in New York. Since its founding, the United States has welcomed immigrants and has granted them citizenship. Their children born on American soil automatically become US nationals. The current US administration is trying to overturn this proud tradition.