"One day a few years ago, 300 migrants were kidnapped between the remote desert towns of Altar, Mexico, and Sasabe, Arizona. A local priest got 120 released, many with broken ankles and other marks of abuse, but the rest vanished. O��scar Marti��nez, a young writer from El Salvador, was in Altar soon after the abduction, and his account of the migrant disappearances is only one of the harrowing stories he garnered from two years spent traveling up and down the migrant trail from Central America and across the US border. More than a quarter of a million Central Americans make this increasingly dangerous journey each year, and each year as many as 20,000 of them are kidnapped"--Publisher's website.

"The story of two refugee families and their hope and resilience as they fight to survive and belong in America The welcoming and acceptance of immigrants and refugees has been central to America's identity for centuries--yet America has periodically turned its back at the times of greatest humanitarian need. After the Last Border is an intimate look at the lives of two women as they struggle for the twenty-first century American dream, having won the "golden ticket" to settle as refugees in Austin, Texas. Mu Naw, a Christian from Myanmar struggling to put down roots with her family, was accepted after decades in a refugee camp at a time when America was at its most open to displaced families; and Hasna, a Muslim from Syria, agrees to relocate as a last resort for the safety of her family--only to be cruelly separated from her children by a sudden ban on refugees from Muslim countries. Writer and activist Jessica Goudeau tracks the human impacts of America's ever-shifting refugee policy as both women narrowly escape from their home countries and begin the arduous but lifesaving process of resettling in Austin, Texas--a city that would show them the best and worst of what America has to offer. After the Last Border situates a dramatic, character-driven story within a larger history--the evolution of modern refugee resettlement in the United States, beginning with World War II and ending with current closed-door policies--revealing not just how America's changing attitudes toward refugees has influenced policies and laws, but also the profound effect on human lives"--

Collecting the diverse perspectives of scholars, labor organizers, and human-rights advocates, Accountability across borders is the first edited collection that connects studies of immigrant integration in host countries to accounts of transnational migrant advocacy efforts, including case studies from the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Covering the role of federal, state, and local governments in both countries of origin and destinations, as well as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), these essays range from reflections on labor solidarity among members of the United Food and Commercial Workers in Toronto to explorations of indigenous students from the Maya diaspora living in San Francisco. Case studies in Mexico also discuss the enforcement of the citizenship rights of Mexican American children and the struggle to affirm the human rights of Central American migrants in transit. As policies regarding immigration, citizenship, and enforcement are reaching a flashpoint in North America, this volume provides key insights into the new dynamics of migrant civil society as well as the scope and limitations of directives from governmental agencies -- Publisher description.

As debate about immigration policy rages from small towns to state capitals, from coffee shops to Congress, would-be immigrants are dying in the desert along the US-Mexico border. Beginning in the 1990s, the US government effectively sealed off the most common border crossing routes. This had the unintended effect of forcing desperate people to seek new paths across open desert. At least 4,000 of them died between 1995 and 2009. While some Americans thought the dead had gotten what they deserved, other Americans organized humanitarian aid groups. A Common Humanity examines some of the most active aid organizations in Tucson, Arizona, which has become a hotbed of advocacy on behalf of undocumented immigrants. This is the first book to examine immigrant aid groups from the inside. Author Lane Van Ham spent more than three years observing the groups and many hours in discussions and interviews. He is particularly interested in how immigrant advocates both uphold the legitimacy of the United States and maintain a broader view of its social responsibilities. By advocating for immigrants regardless of their documentation status, he suggests, advocates navigate the conflicting pulls of their own nation-state citizenship and broader obligations to their neighbors in a globalizing world. And although the advocacy organizations are not overtly religious, Van Ham finds that they do employ religious symbolism as part of their public rhetoric, arguing that immigrants are entitled to humane treatment based on universal human values. Beautifully written and immensely engaging, A Common Humanity adds a valuable human dimension to the immigration debate.

"On February 15, 2019, President Donald Trump declared a national emergency at America's southern border. He depicted a dire crisis, with criminals and drugs flowing unchecked into the country, unlawful border crossers overwhelming enforcement capacity, and dangerous immigrants disappearing into the nation's interior after being released from detention. With his presidential proclamation, he ordered the military to assist in hardening the border, and he declared his intent to re-direct billions of dollars to build the wall he had promised since he first announced his candidacy. In a striking rebuke, Congress voted to overturn the President's declaration of emergency. Never before had Congress rejected a president's proclamation under the National Emergencies Act. Some members decried the President's move as an unlawful usurpation of Congress's power of the purse. Congress had just rejected the administration's request for funds to build a border wall. In trying nonetheless to re-all ocate military funding to the project, critics contended, the President displayed contempt for Congress's constitutional authority to appropriate federal dollars. Many representatives argued further that the President had manufactured the crisis, emphasizing that adding an exceedingly expensive wall to already ample enforcement would not address the real problems at the border. Illegal crossings, they noted, had been declining for over a decade and were at historic lows during the President's first two years in office. The types of migrants now arriving at the border presented urgent legal and policy concerns, but not the threat the President imagined. They were families fleeing violence in Central America. They often sought out border patrol agents at ports of entry in order to request asylum, rather than cross through the desert to evade apprehension. A new wall would not stop them. President Trump promptly issued the very first veto of his administration and attempted to press forwa rd with his plans. His clash with Congress was partly about partisan disagreement. It reflected the deep gulf that now separates the Democratic and Republican parties on immigration policy. But even the Republican-controlled Senate voted to reject the President's emergency declaration. "The Senate vote," the Washington Post remarked the following day, "stood as a rare instance of Republicans breaking with Trump in significant numbers on an issue central to his presidency." It remains to be seen whether the President or Congress will emerge with the upper hand; as we go to press, the funding fight remains tied up in the courts. But the unfolding conflict has transcended partisanship, pitting Congress against the Executive in a battle for control of immigration policy"--

"Two New York Times Washington correspondents provide an inside account with never-before-told stories of the defining issue of Donald Trump's presidency: his steadfast opposition to immigration to the US. Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Michael D. Shear have covered the Trump administration from its earliest days. In Border Wars, they take readers inside the White House to document how Trump and his allies blocked asylum-seekers and refugees, separated families, threatened deportation and sought to erode the longstanding bipartisan consensus that immigration and immigrants make positive contributions to America. Border Wars identifies the players behind Trump's anti-immigration policies, showing how they planned, stumbled, and fought their way toward major immigration changes that have further polarized the nation. This definitive, behind-the-scenes account is filled with previously unreported stories that reveal how Trump's decision-making is driven by gut instinct and marked by disorganization, paranoia, and a constantly feuding staff"--

From a storefront law office in the US border city of El Paso, Texas, one man set out to tear down the great wall of indifference raised between the US and Mexico. Carlos Spector has filed hundreds of political asylum cases on behalf of human rights defenders, journalists, and political dissidents. Though his legal activism has only inched the process forward -- 98 percent of refugees from Mexico are still denied asylum -- his myriad legal cases and the resultant media fallout has increasingly put US immigration policy, the corrupt state of Mexico, and the political basis of immigration, asylum, and deportation decisions on the spot. We Built the Wall is an immersive, engrossing look at the new front in the immigration wars. It follows the gripping stories of people like Saul Reyes, forced to flee his home after a drug cartel murdered several members of his family, and Delmy Calderon, a forty-two-year-old woman leading an eight-woman hunger strike in an El Paso detention center. Truax tracks the heart-wrenching trials of refugees like Yamil, the husband and father who chose a prison cell over deportation to Mexico, and Rocio Hernandez, a nineteen-year-old who spent nearly her entire life in Texas and is now forced to live in a city where narcotraffickers operate with absolute impunity.

"This work explores the conflicts over migration at the center of the social, political, intellectual, and physical landscape of the early United States. Examining the voluntary and forced migrations of Indigenous, African American, and Anglo Americans in the decades immediately following the Revolution, Samantha Seeley argues that the United States took shape as a white republic through contentious negotiations over who could move and where, who could remain and how. Removal was not sweeping, top-down federal legislation. Instead, it was a battle fought on multiple fronts. It encompassed tribal leaders' attempts to expel white settlers from Native lands and African Americans' legal battles to remain within states that sought to drive them out. National in scope, the book is grounded in a close examination of Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri--states poised between the edges of slavery and freedom where removal was both warmly embraced and hotly contested"--

Finalist, 2020 C. Wright Mills Award, given by the Society for the Study of Social Problems Honorable Mention, 2021 Asian America Section Book Award, given by the American Sociological Association An inspiring look inside immigrant youth's political activism in perilous times Undocumented immigrants in the United States who engage in social activism do so at great risk: the threat of deportation. In Organizing While Undocumented, Kevin Escudero shows why and how--despite this risk--many of them bravely continue to fight on the front lines for their rights. Drawing on more than five years of research, including interviews with undocumented youth organizers, Escudero focuses on the movement's epicenters--San Francisco, Chicago, and New York City--to explain the impressive political success of the undocumented immigrant community. He shows how their identities as undocumented immigrants, but also as queer individuals, people of color, and women, connect their efforts to broader social justice struggles today. A timely, worthwhile read, Organizing While Undocumented gives us a look at inspiring triumphs, as well as the inevitable perils, of political activism in precarious times.

Immigration law is unique in its national security applications because, while it may be used as a mechanism for keeping the enemy out, it is also the apparatus for entry into the US. This book examines this topic by conducting a historical overview of using immigration law for national security purposes, and exploring laws and cases themselves.

They stole 15 years of my life. A native of Monterrey, Mexico, Ricardo Aldape Guerra was sentenced to death in 1982 for the first-degree murder of a Houston Police Officer. He spent 15 years in a maximum security prison in Huntsville, Texas, before his death sentence was overturned and he was set free. Ricardo Ampudia, explores the history and ethics of the death penalty in this fascinating look at its impact on Mexicans sentenced to death in the United States. A fervent opponent of capital punishment, Ampudia came to his beliefs because of his involvement in defending Aldape. The author offers a brief introduction about the death penalty, both in the U.S. and around the world. Most of the countries that apply the death penalty have dictatorial regimes or repressive governments, with the U.S. being the notable exception. Subsequent chapters focus on the death penalty in the U.S. and the work done by the Mexican government to protect its citizens abroad. The final chapters focus on the Ricardo Aldape Guerra case. In this section, it¿s revealed that the reopened investigation of the crime uncovered evidence that the jury never heard when Aldape was convicted. And in fact, a shocking pattern of police and prosecutorial intimidation, misconduct, and abuse came to light. Originally published in Mexico as Mexicanos al grito de muerte, this absorbing account of the history, use, and flaws of the death penalty is a must-read for anyone interested in the criminal justice system in the United States.

"Legal Passing offers a nuanced understanding of how undocumented Mexicans constantly negotiate the vexed conditions of their US receiving locales as shaped by a spectrum of federal, state, and local immigration measures. Leveraging differences between cities and states that accommodate immigrants and those that aim to drive them away, Garia shows that undocumented Mexicans in restrictive locations are not more likely to leave, but, instead, learn to pass as 'legal' by carefully choosing how to dress, where to travel, when to speak, and even what to name their children. Legal Passing combines social theory on race and immigration with place and law, using interviews, surveys, and ethnography to show the everyday failures and long-term human consequences of anti-immigrant legislation"--Provided by publisher.

This collection focuses broadly on the role of law in the construction of U.S. borders and takes up an important question raised by the global turn in American studies scholarship: once territory becomes less critical to scholarship in the discipline, what constitutes the frame of American studies? For this project, a "border" is not simply a territorial boundary. Borders are created through formal legal controls on entry and exit, through the construction of rights of citizenship and noncitizenship, and through the regulation of American power in other parts of the world. Where legal rights are at issue, borders and territory continue to play a powerful role, especially as certain spaces, such as Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are marked by the U.S. government as outside legal restraints on government power. Yet the law also extends the United States beyond its literal borders, through, for example, efforts to export democracy to the Middle East. This is the first collection to map the intersection of law and American studies, and it captures the excitement of interdisciplinary work at this intersection.

"A 1975 state-wide law in Texas made it legal for school districts to bar students from public schools if they were in the country illegally, thus making it extremely difficult or even possible for scores of children to receive an education. The resulting landmark Supreme Court case, Plyler v. Doe (1982), established the constitutional right of children to attend public elementary and secondary schools regardless of legal status and changed how the nation approached the conversation about immigration outside the law. Today, as the United States takes steps towards immigration policy reform, Americans are subjected to polarized debates on what the country should do with its "illegal" or "undocumented" population. In Immigration Outside the Law, acclaimed immigration law expert Hiroshi Motomura takes a neutral, legally-accurate approach in his attention and responses to the questions surrounding those whom he calls "unauthorized migrants." In a reasoned and careful discussion, he seeks to explain why unlawful immigration is such a contentious debate in the United States and to offer suggestions for what should be done about it. He looks at ways in which unauthorized immigrants are becoming part of American society and why it is critical to pave the way for this integration. In the final section of the book, Motomura focuses on practical and politically viable solutions to the problem in three public policy areas: international economic development, domestic economic policy, and educational policy. Amidst the extreme opinions voiced daily in the media, Motomura explains the complicated topic of immigration outside the law in an understandable and refreshingly objective way for students and scholars studying immigration law, policy-makers looking for informed opinions, and any American developing an opinion on this contentious issue"--

"The Immigration Act of 1965 was one of the most consequential laws ever passed in the United States and immigration policy continues to be one of the most contentious areas of American politics. As a 'nation of immigrants, ' the United States has a long and complex history of immigration programs and controls which are deeply connected to the shape of American society today. This volume makes sense of the political history and the social impacts of immigration law, showing how legislation has reflected both domestic concerns and wider foreign policy. [The author] examines how immigration law reforms have inspired radically different responses across all levels of government, from cooperation to outright disobedience, and how they continue to fracture broader political debates. [The author] concludes with an overview of how significant, on-going challenges in our interconnected world, including 'failed states' and climate change, will shape American migrations for many decades to come."--

A critical look at the mechanisms, beliefs, and ideologies that govern U.S. immigration laws, and the social impacts of their enforcement--Provided by publisher.

The Fourteenth Amendment and the Privileges and Immunities of American Citizenship-book

"A collection of short essays and stories, Defending Latina/o Immigrant Communities: The Xenophobic Era of Trump and Beyond focuses on one of the most vilified, demonized, and scapegoated groups in the United States: Latina/o immigrants. Using his rigorous academic training, public policy knowledge, and community activist background, as well as his personal and familial experiences as the son of Mexican immigrants, Alvaro Huerta defends and humanizes los de abajo / those on the bottom. He skillfully re-frames how Latina/o immigrants should be viewed as productive and important members in this country, debunking the xenophobic tropes, lies, and myths about Latina/o immigrants as criminals, social burdens, and national security threats. Accompanied by the brilliant art of an internationally acclaimed artist, Salomon Huerta, and powerful photos of two established photographers, this book also investigates intersectional issues related to race, class, place, and state violence."--Back cover.

"At its most basic, "crimmigration" law describes the convergence of two distinct bodies of law: criminal law and procedure with immigration law and procedure. This book lays out crimmigration laws contours. It tracks the legal developments that have created crimmigration law and explains the many ways in which the stark line that once appeared to keep criminal law firmly divided from immi-gration law has melted away. In doing so, it highlights crimmigration laws most salient features-its ability to substantially raise the stakes of criminal prosecutions by dramati-cally expanding the list of crimes that can result in removal from the United States, its willingness to freely rely on crimes that apply only to migrants, and its vast dependence on detention as a means of policing immigration law"--

"This ethnography investigates immigration enforcement in New York City, following individual migrants, their lawyers, and the NGOs that serve them into the immigration courtrooms that decide their cases"--

"Citizenship as Foundation of Rights explores the nature and meaning of citizenship and the rights flowing from American citizens in the context of current debates around politics including immigration. The book explains the sources of citizenship rights in the Constitution and focuses on three key citizenship rights - the right to vote, the right to employment, and the right to travel in the US. It explains why those rights are fundamental and how national identification systems and ID requirements to vote, work and travel undermine the fundamental citizen rights. Richard Sobel analyzes how protecting citizens' rights preserves them for future generations of citizens and aspiring citizens here. No other book offers such a clarification of fundamental citizen rights and explains how ID schemes contradict and undermine the constitutional rights of American citizenship"--

"The Battle to Stay in America is the story of a community learning to defend itself from the U.S. federal government's crackdown on immigrants. Told through the eyes of a lawyer on the front line, the book offers an introduction to a broken legal system"--

"During the Trump administration, the immigration courts have been decried as more politicized enforcement weapon than impartial tribunal. Yet few people are aware of a fundamental flaw in the system that long pre-dates the current administration: The immigration courts are not really "courts" at all but an office of the Department of Justice-the nation's law enforcement agency. The Accidental History of the U.S. Immigration Courts uses narrative history, focusing on previously unstudied decisions in the Franklin D. Roosevelt and George W. Bush administrations, to help readers understand both the human tragedy of our immigration court system today and the human crises that led to its creation. Moving the reader from understanding to action, Alison Peck offers a lens through which to evaluate contemporary bills and proposals to reform our immigration court system. Peck provides an accessible legal analysis of recent events to make the case for independent immigration courts, proposing that the courts be moved from the Department of Justice 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"--

"Providing a radical new approach to labour migration, this book challenges the prevailing legal and political construction of the figure of the irregular migrant labourer, whilst at the same time reimagining this irregularity as the basis of an alternative, post-capitalist, sociality. The text draws on the work of contemporary philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy, and more specifically his term 'ecotechnics', in order to examine how economic, political and juridical norms deny the full legal status of certain people who are deemed to be irregular. This ostensible irregularity is revealed as a regular feature of labour market practice, and a necessary support for the conceptual foundations of capitalist legality. As this book shows, however, this legality - and with it, the technological subordination of life to the circulation of capital as if this were the only possibility for our being in the world - is not insurmountable. The book's consideration of the figure of the irregular migrant labourer comes to provide an alternative basis for reimagining our relationship not only to migration and to labour itself, but ultimately to each other. This powerful analysis of contemporary labour migration is of considerable interest to legal and political theorists, philosophers, labour lawyers, migration experts, and others with theoretical, political or policy interests in this area. Anastasia Tataryn is an Assistant Professor at St. Jerome's University of Waterloo, Canada"--

"In many countries around the world persons with disabilities still suffer torture, ill- treatment and severe discrimination. Sometimes they are persecuted directly by the state, but frequently it is their family members, society or religious institutions that expose them to serious harm, while the state turns a blind eye to it. Persons with disabilities make up approximately 15% of the world population and an estimated 20% of the population of refugees and internally displaced persons. This book examines when persons with disabilities, who are being persecuted for reasons of their disability, are refugees and thus entitled to the protection of the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1967 Protocol"--

"In 2007, Saket Soni received an anonymous phone call from an Indian migrant worker inside a Mississippi labor camp. He and 500 other men were living in squalor in Gulf Coast "man camps," surrounded by barbed wire, watched by armed guards, crammed into cold trailers with putrid portable toilets, forced to eat moldy bread and frozen rice. Worse, lured by the promise of good work and green cards, the men had desperately scraped together up to 20,000 dollars each to apply for this "opportunity" to rebuild oil rigs after Hurricane Katrina, putting their families into impossible debt. Soni traces the workers' extraordinary escape; their march on foot to Washington, DC; and their 31-day hunger strike to bring attention to their cause"--

"More than a quarter of a million LGBTQ-identified migrants in the United States lack documentation and constantly risk detention and deportation. LGBTQ migrants around the world endure similarly precarious situations. Eithne Luibheid's and Karma R. Chavez's edited collection provides a first-of-its-kind look at LGBTQ migrants and communities. The academics, activists, and artists in the volume center illegalization, detention, and deportation in national and transnational contexts, and examine how migrants and allies negotiate, resist, refuse, and critique these processes. The works contribute to the fields of gender and sexuality studies, critical race and ethnic studies, borders and migration studies, and decolonial studies. Bridging voices and works from inside and outside of the academy, and international in scope, Queer and Trans Migrations illuminates new perspectives in the field of queer and trans migration studies"--

Over the course of less than a century, the U.S. transformed from a nation that excluded Asians from immigration and citizenship to one that receives more immigrants from Asia than from anywhere else in the world. Yet questions of how that dramatic shift took place have long gone unanswered. In this first comprehensive history of Asian exclusion repeal, Jane H. Hong unearths the transpacific movement that successfully ended restrictions on Asian immigration. The mid-twentieth century repeal of Asian exclusion, Hong shows, was part of the price of America's postwar empire in Asia. The demands of U.S. empire-building during an era of decolonization created new opportunities for advocates from both the U.S. and Asia to lobby U.S. Congress for repeal. Drawing from sources in the United States, India, and the Philippines, Opening the Gates to Asia charts a movement more than twenty years in the making. Positioning repeal at the intersection of U.S. civil rights struggles and Asian decolonization, Hong raises thorny questions about the meanings of nation, independence, and citizenship on the global stage.

Debunks the pervasive and self-congratulatory myth that our country is proudly founded by and for immigrants, and urges readers to embrace a more complex and honest history of the United States Whether in political debates or discussions about immigration around the kitchen table, many Americans, regardless of party affiliation, will say proudly that we are a nation of immigrants. In this bold new book, historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz asserts this ideology is harmful and dishonest because it serves to mask and diminish the US's history of settler colonialism, genocide, white supremacy, slavery, and structural inequality, all of which we still grapple with today. She explains that the idea that we are living in a land of opportunity--founded and built by immigrants--was a convenient response by the ruling class and its brain trust to the 1960s demands for decolonialization, justice, reparations, and social equality. Moreover, Dunbar-Ortiz charges that this feel good--but inaccurate--story promotes a benign narrative of progress, obscuring that the country was founded in violence as a settler state, and imperialist since its inception. While some of us are immigrants or descendants of immigrants, others are descendants of white settlers who arrived as colonizers to displace those who were here since time immemorial, and still others are descendants of those who were kidnapped and forced here against their will. This paradigm shifting new book from the highly acclaimed author of An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States charges that we need to stop believing and perpetuating this simplistic and a historical idea and embrace the real (and often horrific) history of the United States.

"Conventionally, US immigration history has been understood through the lens of restriction and those who have been barred from getting in. In contrast, The Good Immigrants considers immigration from the perspective of Chinese elites--intellectuals, businessmen, and students--who gained entrance because of immigration exemptions. Exploring a century of Chinese migrations, Madeline Hsu looks at how the model minority characteristics of many Asian Americans resulted from US policies that screened for those with the highest credentials in the most employable fields, enhancing American economic competitiveness. The earliest US immigration restrictions targeted Chinese people but exempted students as well as individuals who might extend America's influence in China. Western-educated Chinese such as Madame Chiang Kai-shek became symbols of the US impact on China, even as they patriotically advocated for China's modernization. World War II and the rise of communism transformed Chinese students abroad into refugees, and the Cold War magnified the importance of their talent and training. As a result, Congress legislated piecemeal legal measures to enable Chinese of good standing with professional skills to become citizens. Pressures mounted to reform American discriminatory immigration laws, culminating with the 1965 Immigration Act. Filled with narratives featuring such renowned Chinese immigrants as I. M. Pei, The Good Immigrants examines the shifts in immigration laws and perceptions of cultural traits that enabled Asians to remain in the United States as exemplary, productive Americans"--