Migrating to Prison

Migrating to Prison
Author: César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández
Publisher: The New Press
Total Pages: 152
Release: 2023-10-03
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1620978350

NATIONAL BESTSELLER A powerful, in-depth look at the imprisonment of immigrants, addressing the intersection of immigration and the criminal justice system, with a new epilogue by the author “Argues compellingly that immigrant advocates shouldn’t content themselves with debates about how many thousands of immigrants to lock up, or other minor tweaks.” —Gus Bova, Texas Observer For most of America’s history, we simply did not lock people up for migrating here. Yet over the last thirty years, the federal and state governments have increasingly tapped their powers to incarcerate people accused of violating immigration laws. Migrating to Prison takes a hard look at the immigration prison system’s origins, how it currently operates, and why. A leading voice for immigration reform, César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández explores the emergence of immigration imprisonment in the mid-1980s and looks at both the outsized presence of private prisons and how those on the political right continue, disingenuously, to link immigration imprisonment with national security risks and threats to the rule of law. Now with an epilogue that brings it into the Biden administration, Migrating to Prison is an urgent call for the abolition of immigration prisons and a radical reimagining of who belongs in the United States.

Migrating to Prison

Migrating to Prison
Author: César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández
Publisher: The New Press
Total Pages: 207
Release: 2019-12-03
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1620974215

NATIONAL BESTSELLER A powerful, in-depth look at the imprisonment of immigrants, addressing the intersection of immigration and the criminal justice system, with a new epilogue by the author “Argues compellingly that immigrant advocates shouldn’t content themselves with debates about how many thousands of immigrants to lock up, or other minor tweaks.” —Gus Bova, Texas Observer For most of America’s history, we simply did not lock people up for migrating here. Yet over the last thirty years, the federal and state governments have increasingly tapped their powers to incarcerate people accused of violating immigration laws. Migrating to Prison takes a hard look at the immigration prison system’s origins, how it currently operates, and why. A leading voice for immigration reform, César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández explores the emergence of immigration imprisonment in the mid-1980s and looks at both the outsized presence of private prisons and how those on the political right continue, disingenuously, to link immigration imprisonment with national security risks and threats to the rule of law. Now with an epilogue that brings it into the Biden administration, Migrating to Prison is an urgent call for the abolition of immigration prisons and a radical reimagining of who belongs in the United States.

American Gulag

American Gulag
Author: Mark Dow
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 428
Release: 2004
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 0520246691

The freelance writer and poet takes an unprecedented look inside the secret and repressive world of U.S. immigration prisons.

Crimmigration Law

Crimmigration Law
Author: César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández
Publisher:
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2022-05-02
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 9781641059459

Crimmigration Law is a must-read for law students and practitioners seeking an introduction to the complex legal doctrine and practice challenges at the merger of immigration and criminal law.

Baby Jails

Baby Jails
Author: Philip G. Schrag
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 396
Release: 2020-01-21
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0520971094

“I worked in a trailer that ICE had set aside for conversations between the women and the attorneys. While we talked, their children, most of whom seemed to be between three and eight years old, played with a few toys on the floor. It was hard for me to get my head around the idea of a jail full of toddlers, but there they were.” For decades, advocates for refugee children and families have fought to end the U.S. government’s practice of jailing children and families for months, or even years, until overburdened immigration courts could rule on their claims for asylum. Baby Jails is the history of that legal and political struggle. Philip G. Schrag, the director of Georgetown University’s asylum law clinic, takes readers through thirty years of conflict over which refugee advocates resisted the detention of migrant children. The saga began during the Reagan administration when 15-year-old Jenny Lisette Flores languished in a Los Angeles motel that the government had turned into a makeshift jail by draining the swimming pool, barring the windows, and surrounding the building with barbed wire. What became known as the Flores Settlement Agreement was still at issue years later, when the Trump administration resorted to the forced separation of families after the courts would not allow long-term jailing of the children. Schrag provides recommendations for the reform of a system that has brought anguish and trauma to thousands of parents and children. Provocative and timely, Baby Jails exposes the ongoing struggle between the U.S. government and immigrant advocates over the duration and conditions of confinement of children who seek safety in America.

Presente!

Presente!
Author: Cristina Tzintzún
Publisher: AK Press
Total Pages: 266
Release: 2014-04-21
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1849351678

Read the media coverage of the increasingly heated debate around immigration reform in the United States: two dominant narratives emerge. From Lou Dobbs to Sean Hannity, commentators on the right have crafted an image rooted in fear, demonizing undocumented immigrants as a threat to national security and raising the specter of a deliberate "browning of America." Left-leaning journalists, on the other hand, foreground victimization, emphasizing the plight of immigrants, stripping them of their agency. Neither captures the range of experiences within undocumented immigrant communities, and both fail to see immigrants as active participants in their own struggle for racial and economic justice. Presente! offers a rare perspective on the immigrant-rights movement, written by immigrant workers themselves. Including a range of essays exploring the intersection of race, class, and immigration in the United States, this anthology challenges its readers to move beyond a "legalization-only" framework and embrace a broader vision for social justice organizing embodied in the work of grassroots organizations across the country resisting state repression, cultivating solidarity, and building alternative models for progressive social change. Offered in a dual-language edition, with a foreword by Democracy Now! co-host Juan Gonzáles. Cristina Tzintzún is the executive director of Workers Defense Project, a Texas based workers' rights organization. Carlos Pérez de Alejo is the executive director of Cooperation Texas, an organization dedicated to the creation of sustainable jobs through the development, support, and promotion of worker-owned cooperatives. Arnulfo Manríquez is an organizer at Workers Defense Project, where he organizes immigrant construction workers to defend their labor and human rights.

Saving the Freedom of Information Act

Saving the Freedom of Information Act
Author: Margaret B. Kwoka
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2021-10-14
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1108482740

The Freedom of Information Act is vital for democratic accountability. Understanding who uses it is key to re-centering its oversight purposes.

The Accidental History of the U.S. Immigration Courts

The Accidental History of the U.S. Immigration Courts
Author: Alison Peck
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 239
Release: 2022-05-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 0520389662

"Despite public concern with the increasing politicization of U.S. immigration courts, few people are aware of the system's fundamental flaw: the immigration courts are not really 'courts' but an office of the Department of Justice--the nation's law enforcement agency. Alison Peck's original and surprising account shows how paranoia sparked by World War II and the War on Terror drove the structure of the immigration courts. Focusing on previously unstudied decisions in the Roosevelt and Bush administrations, this book divulges both the human tragedy of our current immigration system and the human crises that led to its creation. Peck provides an accessible legal analysis of recent events to make the case for independent immigration courts, proposing that the courts be moved into an independent, Article I court system. As long as the immigration courts remain under the authority of the attorney general, the administration of immigration justice will remain a game of political football--with people's very lives on the line." -- back cover.

No Justice in the Shadows

No Justice in the Shadows
Author: Alina Das
Publisher: Bold Type Books
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2020-04-14
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 156858945X

This provocative account of our immigration system's long, racist history reveals how it has become the brutal machine that upends the lives of millions of immigrants today. Each year in the United States, hundreds of thousands of people are arrested, imprisoned, and deported, trapped in what leading immigrant rights activist and lawyer Alina Das calls the "deportation machine." The bulk of the arrests target people who have a criminal record -- so-called "criminal aliens" -- the majority of whose offenses are immigration-, drug-, or traffic-related. These individuals are uprooted and banished from their homes, their families, and their communities. Through the stories of those caught in the system, Das traces the ugly history of immigration policy to explain how the U.S. constructed the idea of the "criminal alien," effectively dividing immigrants into the categories "good" and "bad," "deserving" and "undeserving." As Das argues, we need to confront the cruelty of the machine so that we can build an inclusive immigration policy premised on human dignity and break the cycle once and for all.

Anchor Babies and the Challenge of Birthright Citizenship

Anchor Babies and the Challenge of Birthright Citizenship
Author: Leo R. Chavez
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 112
Release: 2017-10-10
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1503605264

Birthright citizenship has a deep and contentious history in the United States, one often hard to square in a country that prides itself on being "a nation of immigrants." Even as the question of citizenship for children of immigrants was seemingly settled by the Fourteenth Amendment, vitriolic debate has continued for well over a century, especially in relation to U.S. race relations. Most recently, a provocative and decidedly more offensive term than birthright citizenship has emerged: "anchor babies." With this book, Leo R. Chavez explores the question of birthright citizenship, and of citizenship in the United States writ broadly, as he counters the often hyperbolic claims surrounding these so-called anchor babies. Chavez considers how the term is used as a political dog whistle, how changes in the legal definition of citizenship have affected the children of immigrants over time, and, ultimately, how U.S.-born citizens still experience trauma if they live in families with undocumented immigrants. By examining this pejorative term in its political, historical, and social contexts, Chavez calls upon us to exorcise it from public discourse and work toward building a more inclusive nation.