Blog - The Social Anatomy of a Deportation Regime

Welcome to the United States

Melissa Frasco — Tue, 12 Apr 2022 14:34:25 +0000

*Disclaimer: Refugee Experiences May Vary Depending on Country of Origin, Skin Color, or Religion*

Since the last article I wrote on Ukraine there have been more developments concerning the refugee situation. To the point where now Ukrainians and Russians are arriving to the U.S. - Mexico Border in increasing numbers, all fleeing Putin’s war on Ukraine. For the general public it is more than clear why Ukrainians are fleeing, but for Russians it is more complicated. For Russians at the border one women described how she fled with her family after she spent a week in jail for protesting the war on Ukraine. Europeans at the U.S. – Mexico Border is not a new phenomenon but, the numbers are surging now more than ever. What I would like to take a closer look at is the treatment of recent European arrivals versus prior arrivals from Latin American and other countries

First, I must explain that this is a horrific situation at the border where all refugees are subject to numerous forms of dehumanization, lack of basic needs (shelter, food, water), and human rights violations. Second, all of those at the border are refugees, there should no hierarchy comparing one refugee experience to another. My third point is that the U.S. immigration system is inherently unequal and therefore treats refugees unequally. Lastly, I will be referring to all of those at the border as refugees, as often refugees are allotted certain assistance and status as opposed to migrants. For those referred to as migrants or, economic migrants as the United States often uses, little is done to protect them. For example, how many times have you heard a reporter on television refer to group as “Central American Refugees” or “Latin American Refugees”? These words simply do not roll off the tongue, because in mainstream media (aside from the occasional discussion of political refugees) does not present Latin Americans as refugees. (To learn more about the refugee and migrant binary I highly recommend Rebecca Hamlin’s book Crossing: How We Label and React to People on the Move.)

If we are going to discuss the presence of European refugees at the U.S. – Mexico border we must discuss the positionality between newly arrived Ukrainians, Russians, and the typically pre-existing Latin American migrants. There is not much data available at the moment on how many Ukrainians have been accepted, however it is obvious that Ukrainian refugees are entering the United States through the same border that has refused the majority of Latin Americans. One report stated that Ukrainians were waiting one day and then are being connected with volunteers until they cross into the United States. Many Ukrainian and Russian speaking U.S. citizens have gone to the border as volunteers to help communicate with the new refugees. As for Russians fleeing Putin’s reign, they have been told to find migrant shelters until their case can be considered for asylum. As for many Latin Americans who have been left for months waiting for their asylum cases to be heard there seems to be no urgency at all to process their papers. With this ongoing refugee crisis at the border there are going to be more opportunities for the U.S. to show how they welcome some refugees and exclude others. There should be no hierarchy of refugee experiences, but with the likelihood of the refugee experiences being played out unequally we must keep a critical eye on how refugees are treated when coming to the United States.

Duenes, J., Solomon, D. B., & Cooke, K. (2022, April 2). Camp of Ukrainians at the U.S.-Mexico border swells, as more refugees arrive. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/world/camp-ukrainians-us-mexico-border-swells-more-refugees-arrive-2022-04-01/

Hamlin, R. (2021). Crossing: How we label and react to people on the move. Stanford University Press.

Solomon, D. B. (2022, March 19). Stuck at Mexico border, anti-war Russians sweat their futures as Ukrainians enter U.S. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/world/stuck-mexico-border-anti-war-russians-sweat-their-futures-ukrainians-enter-us-2022-03-19/

US allows Ukrainians fleeing war into the country through Mexico. (n.d.). Retrieved April 12, 2022, from https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3/17/us-allows-ukrainians-fleeing-war-into-country-through-mexico

How Do We Make Sense of Ukraine?

Melissa Frasco — Wed, 09 Mar 2022 16:08:00 +0000

If you’re like me, you have grown up your entire life in the United States. When I was in school we always talked about wars as if they were so far removed, even ones ongoing wars like Afghanistan and Iraq. This idea of being removed was beyond a geographical sense. Unless you were supporting the troops or a loved one had entered the armed services you were still far removed the war (aside from hearing about it on the evening news).

This leads me to Ukraine and how I am making sense of the current situation, as a student and as someone who is constantly learning. I will start with the second point, sometimes it feels like every time you turn on the news you are learning about a new human rights violation. There are so many stories that need your empathy, but who has enough of that to go around? On the other side of this we have people like myself, who are now entering or working in the fields of mental health, social services, immigration/migration, human rights, political science, and others. We are seeing what we have learned in history class happening right before our eyes. We are already in a global pandemic, we are seeing social movements gain speed, and we are teetering back and forth between waiting for the world to feel (somewhat) normal again and being terrified that it never will. This article cannot tell you what will happen or how things will go, but I hope it helps makes sense of some of our feelings.

Whether any of us were truly aware of the situation in Ukraine before Russia’s invasion we now no longer have a choice. We are now aware of not only the invasion but also the twisting narrative that has left Ukraine to defend itself. There are measures being taken for civilians to take up arms for their country and even those who cannot fight are changing road signs confuse invading Russian troops. These pro-Ukraine slogans are being found on physical and electronic signs, such as one reported by VICE that showed an electric car charging station that alternates between phrases such as “Glory to Ukraine” and “Putin is a dickhead.” In another amusing feat we see roadside billboards that have stopped relaying traffic information. One billboard found in an NPR article showed a roadside billboard that now says "Putin lost, the entire world is with Ukraine,". And even myself who was previously unfamiliar with Ukraine’s situation I find myself rooting for them harder than ever. Here Ukraine is the underdog standing up to Putin’s goliath of a country.

Something we must not lose sight of here is that Ukraine is not the first country to do this, and that the people of Russia are not all complicit with Putin’s invasion. It’s very easy to get riled up and dump out all the Russian sounding vodkas at the liquor store. The symbolism is real and tangible in these acts yes, but we need more direct aid. Take the example of Poland opening its borders to all Ukrainian refugees to come without documentation and paperwork. While people are fleeing for their lives it seems trivial to ask them for the required paper work. Although I say this with sarcasm there are similar situations where people who are preparing to flee are required to have their paperwork, documentation, passport, and any other important papers they may cross into another country for safety. In fact, refugees have been turned away, sent back to violent situations, and died while trying to cross without proper documents. You can look at any number of floating graveyards, such as the Rio Grande or the Mediterranean in Europe. Even for the migrants in boats who are hoping to be picked up and taken to safety (as typically they are sailing in rafts) these migrants have been left to drown and die at sea. In 2013 we saw this exact tragedy play out, where Syrian refugees were in danger and Italian authorities had been made aware, and yet 268 refugees died at sea, including 60 children. Instead of a prompt rescue response Italian authorities showed up hours later after the initial distress call, only able to save the small number of survivors. Read more about this incident in an article by the Washington post.

Just under a decade apart we have the difference of Ukrainian refugees being welcomed with open arms and no paperwork requirements versus Syrian refugees being left to drown in the open sea by Italian authorities. These examples are not meant to bash Italy or praise Poland, but rather for us to take a critical look at how countries interact with refugees and asylum seekers. No receiving country has perfected their refugee and immigrant policies. Just as we have seen Ukrainians welcomed with open arms, we have seen evidence online of Black and Brown Ukrainians being passed over for the “Ukrainians first” idea, which prioritizes typically White native born Ukrainians over their Black immigrant counterparts. As reported by NBC news African immigrants who are in Ukraine for work, schooling, or immigration related circumstances are being left behind. As one NBC article shared the experience of a student, named Alexander Somto Orah who tried to board multiple trains leaving Ukraine. First the passports of the those getting on the trains were only those of white Ukrainians who were allowed to board. When Orah and his friends got on a second train they were escorted off because of the “Ukrainians first” idea, which also asserts that non-Ukrainian people cannot leave before native Ukrainians. Orah and his other friends had to tell a conductor face to face “Open the door or we die” they fought their way to the Polish border for the rest of the trip. You can read more on Orah’s account in the original NBC articlehere.

Moving forward, the issues discussed here will not be reconciled overnight. Migration occurs within in unequal system, that will typically favor those who hold space at the top of the social hierarchy. Whether there are refugees and asylum seekers or students who are immigrants in the country they are studying in, they will all be exposed an immigration system that is inherently unequal. Of course, in the moment Ukraine and surrounding countries are still very much in crisis mode, but countries must consider in the future for the ways to potentially limit the effects of unjust and value laden policy. There is no law in Ukraine that prohibits certain non-native Ukrainians from fleeing and in what order but still we see this de facto sentiment upheld. This sentiment has made it notably more difficult for non-native Ukrainians to flee the same situation. We cannot be surprised when unequal systems reproduce inequalities, we must have proactive approaches to lessen the effects of these inequalities in crisis.

From the U.S. embassy stating that those who are citizens of the United States and are stuck in Ukraine have the ability to flee to Poland without the need for documentation.

https://pl.usembassy.gov/message-to-u-s-citizens-poland-ukraine-border-open-to-u-s-citizens-february-12-2022/

Orah’s story leaving Ukraine

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/open-door-die-africans-report-racism-hostility-trying-flee-ukraine-rcna17953

VICE electric charging stations displaying pro-Ukrainian messages

https://www.vice.com/en/article/akvya5/russian-electric-vehicle-chargers-hacked-tell-users-putin-is-a-dickhead

NPR Ukrainians altering road signs

https://www.npr.org/2022/03/01/1083644721/ukraine-russian-soldiers-road-signs-billboards

Why are Migrants Sewing Their Lips Shut at the Border?

Melissa Frasco — Wed, 23 Feb 2022 16:25:00 +0000

There is a unique migrant led protest taking place on at the southern Mexican border. In the area of Tapachula migrants have sewn their mouths shut in protest due to the long wait times they are experiencing for their asylum applications. As an article by Vox reported from 2020 to 2021 the amount of asylum applications tripled leading to extended uncertainty for migrants confined to the camps in Tapachula. Although we usually see these issues overflowing at the U.S.– Mexico Border this most recent protest is at Mexico’s southern border shared with Guatemala. These asylum seekers are here because they submitted their applications to continue their journeys further into Mexico and on from there. One of the reasons they have not been able to move forward is that according to Mexican authorities it is illegal for them to proceed further without “legal immigration status” to do so.

The protest originated as a hunger strike. Most recently it turned into migrants sewing their mouths with plastic thread and needles. Despite the graphic nature of the protest there have been many like it before in different parts of the world (such as Nauru Island and in Greece). But what is the point of taking such drastic measures? The point is that people will listen, news outlets will report, and people will start to understand the direness of their situation. Even this blog has changed course temporarily to focus on the current situation rather than my experiences working with the local immigrant community.

Forming as a stem for the protest migrants describe their living situations as inhumane; being without proper access to food and shelter. It is obvious that the conditions here are ripe for resistance, so why haven’t people been listening? Most notably Mexico’s National Institute of Migration (INM) responded to the protest dismissing their acts, referring to them as “senseless”, and later claimed that the migrants’ needs were already being met. This reaction is another example of policy not reflecting true experiences or circumstances. Not to mention the fact it is implausible for any policy to predict the future, let alone those of migrants. I am not saying that I have a better solution or much experience in policy making, I am suggesting instead that the current situation is not working. Therefore, leading to the continuously graphic protests.

Lastly, I would also like to point out that the migrants at the border are not just from Central America. The Washington Post reported that aside from Central Americans there are migrants from as far as Venezuela, Haiti, Africa, and Asia. It is not only the situations we see at the U.S.-Mexico Border that are dire. We are seeing increasingly disturbing conditions at borders throughout the Americas and Europe (where many flee to for asylum purposes).

This blog is just a glance at the migrant experiences. There is a lot to unpack in discussing migrant resistance and protest. These acts remind us that migrants have agency, they have a voice, and that they will use their voice. Part of why I believe the mistreatment of migrants continues is that they are easy to exploit (whether they are asylum seekers or not). I do understand I have used the term “migrant” throughout this article, but the terminology of migrant versus refugee/asylee does matter. Asylum is a complicated process, and the U.S. has a very narrow definition who is considered a refugee. Migrant as a term can be a more expansive, however U.S. policy gives little if any recognition to “undocumented migrants” and “economic migrants” unless to penalize or exclude them in policy. I use migrant here in my own to include all of those stuck at the Tapachula site. I do so to try and consider the many reasons and ways that people migrate. I hope that this article begins to helps us think more critically of migrant and asylum narratives we see in the media.

I would like to thank Nicole Narrea whose Vox article I first saw concerning the protest.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2022/2/17/22937405/migrant-sew-lips-tapachula-mexico-us-border

Parenting and Covid-19: Navigating School, Childcare, and a Lack of Resources.

Melissa Frasco — Tue, 08 Feb 2022 15:50:00 +0000

If there is one thing that most adults are missing during the pandemic: it is our separation of spaces. Prior to the pandemic we were all working at work, learning in school, and living in our homes. Due to the spread of new variants these lines of different spaces have become severely blurred. Not only have adults had to adapt, but also children. Jobs once done in person were now done from one’s living room, children’s homes became classrooms, and families became lost in the mix.

This blog will move forward with reflections of my experiences working with mixed status families who were managing school and pandemic life. A mixed status family refers to people in a family unit who have different immigration statuses. For example, a family can have any combination of immigration status but, often parents will be undocumented, and their children will be a citizen as they were born in the United States. Mixed status families present a unique experience because of how immigration laws allocate certain rights to U.S. citizens while denying rights to others.

Moving on from lockdowns, online schooling was no easy task. I worked mostly with single moms and elementary age children. Most of these families followed the pattern of undocumented parents, and children who were U.S. citizens. I had parents who were sent home with school issued ipads or laptops that kids were unable to use because their family was unable to afford internet services at the time. Aside from the important decision of issuing the same technology for each student to take home, signs of inequality would still arise. Other issues that arose included not having fast enough internet for siblings to participate in online classes, children not having their own spaces for classes, and parents were required to supervise their children in online school. This issue came up for many parents of young children, who had jobs without benefits or flexible schedules. Although parents were not in control of their own work schedules at times, leaving a child unattended for online school could present certain repercussions. For younger children in online school who need adult supervision if anything were to go wrong (a freak accident, emergency etc.) and an adult could not respond, a call to ACS (The Administration for Children's Services) would have to placed. A teacher in New York State is a mandated reporter and must report any suspicion of child endangerment. This can lead to families who can be penalized for being in poor positions where they cannot take off work without the risk of losing their job, or they cannot be present for all of their child’s online schooling with the risk of an ACS report being made.

My example here is not to state whether parents should choose between their jobs and kid’s online schooling but rather to present the extreme difficulties mixed status families face. For after online school parents may need to go to work a nightshift or attempt to help children with their homework in a language they do not yet understand. Working with individuals who only spoke Spanish they often felt they did not have a way to communicate with their child’s school. Although their children were often bilingual parents became easily isolated when schools did not have a Spanish option on the phone, the child teacher did not speak Spanish or have a translator present, or inform parents of their right to a translator. Much of my work became advocating with parents and their children for their difficulties with online school and translation services. Most of these parents were navigating their own undocumented status while also their children’s in trying to figure out how to get their child special education services or trying to determine if a free lunch program in school would be seen as a public charge. However, all students have rights to their services in public schools. Undocumented children have only been guaranteed K-12 schooling/resources since 1982 thanks to the Plyer v. Doe case. For many parents they maneuver through different resources with fear that it will one day be used against their immigration status.

Lastly, I would like to focus on the lack of external resources for families. For the 2020 and 2021 school year while most NYC schools took place on online learning due to concerns over Covid-19. In the 2022 school year the option of online learning has not been given to students and families. While some had begun to adapt to online learning this is no longer an option. For the families still figuring out work schedules and school schedules finding a daycare or afterschool program is not simple. The increasingly expensive cost of childcare makes a formal childcare program out of reach for most families. This leads to families having to rely on neighborhood babysitters or family members. Kids who could usually participate in low-cost afterschool programs now no longer have these community-based options. There is so much that schools, parents, and teachers are still learning and experiencing during the Covid-19 pandemic. Still for families I have discussed here the inequalities they experience are amplified by the pandemic causing these families being left in the lurch.

More information on Plyer v. Doe (1982)

https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/plyler-v-doe-public-education-immigrant-students

A Look at the Intersections of Domestic Violence and Undocumented Status

Melissa Frasco — Wed, 02 Feb 2022 15:37:41 +0000

It is not hard to agree that domestic violence is a horrendous crime. Just like it is not hard to wear purple for domestic violence awareness month (October) or share the number of a domestic violence hotline on social media. The reality of domestic violence is that it is much more nuanced. In the traditional depictions of domestic violence we imagine men committing violent acts against women. This is usually where the public’s imagination stops. However, people of all genders, all sexual orientations, ethnicities, and racial groups experience domestic violence. While my previous point is important to keep in mind, I would like to focus particularly on the undocumented women I have worked with in the past, and who are survivors of domestic violence.

Many of the women I worked with had experienced years domestic violence at the hands of an intimate partner. Some had even started experiencing the domestic violence in their country of origin, which then followed them to the United States. Working as a case manager I met these women some years out of their abusive relationships. Some moved in with family to get away from the abuse, others moved states, some were able to financially free themselves and no longer be dependent on their abusers. Like many other domestic violence survivors there is no right time to leave, in fact many women have an increased risk of homicide when they choose to physically leave a violent relationship. This is also why the idea of telling someone to “just leave an abusive relationship” can be a damaging.

Instead factors such as financial control/abuse, physical violence, emotional abuse, spiritual abuse, sexual abuse, and immigration status all play a role. For the women I worked with they had been threatened with having immigration called on them by their abusive partners. The threat of calling immigration or ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) typically is intertwined with the fear of deportation. With ever tightening restrictions that criminalize the everyday activities of undocumented folks coupled with brutality of domestic violence women in these situations can feel beyond helpless. These threats become so powerful to the point where these undocumented women are being threatened by their (sometimes) undocumented partners to have ICE called on them. I have seen examples of this in cases where women try to leave the abusive relationship or if they try to report the abuse they are experiencing. Women and especially immigrants become particularly vulnerable when they do not speak English and therefore have trouble understanding their own rights despite their immigration status.

Even though a relationship between two people who are undocumented may seem somewhat equal, power imbalances can still occur. Power imbalances typically occur when abuse, control, or power is unfairly exerted over someone for their gender, immigration status, financial situation, and their education (or lack thereof). These are just some of the common categories that women in domestic violence situations find themselves being exploited by.

Now that we have discussed the situations where some are unable to speak up due to fear, I would like to explore what happens when some women are able to report domestic violence. For the most part I worked with women who were undocumented and usually Spanish speaking only. For the most part domestic violence service providers have greatly increased their ability to cater to the experiences of undocumented and non-English speaking survivors. In the case of reporting domestic violence to the police the process becomes more complex. Despite some misinformation that exists, by law in New York City anyone has the right to call 911 in the case of emergency or if they feel that their life is in danger. Although, it is not easy to explain to someone who is undocumented that they can call 911 whenever they need to. This is true even though their immigration status is typically vilified by many public policies. For example, I worked with a woman who did at one point make a police report of the physical abuse she was experiencing. Despite being able to make the report, she was never informed properly on how to move forward with the case. Therefore, her charges never went forward, and years later when she was trying to file for a divorce she was looked down upon for not pursuing the charges years earlier when she tried to get a copy of her police report. Though following through with charges may seem like common sense to some, for someone who is not in the country they grew up in and does not speak the language following up with charges appears out of reach.

At the end of the day the woman who was unable follow through with charges after her police report does not signify that her abuse did not happen. Instead, it signified a lack of transparency and collaboration that our justice system is not capable of aiding survivors and immigrants.

Below I will list resources for domestic violence survivors and advocates:

Domestic violence and abuse can include:

Hitting, slapping, kicking or using any other kind of physical violence against you

Forcing you to have sex when you don't want to, or to do sexual things you don't want to do
Threatening to hurt you, your children, or someone else you care about or your pet
Constantly insulting and criticizing you
Stalking, obsessively checking up on or otherwise trying to control your behavior

If you or someone you know is experiencing this kind of behavior from a partner, please call New York City's 24 hour Domestic Violence Hotline, 1-800- 621-4673

NYC’s 24-hour Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-212-227-3000; TTY 1-866-604-5350

NYC Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project: 212-714-1141

En Español

Nuestras tres líneas directas están disponibles las 24 horas, los 7 días de la semana, durante todo el año. El personal te puede brindar ayuda en español y en cualquier otro idioma. Contamos con consejeros listos para ayudarte en este momento.

Para violencia doméstica, llama al: 800-621–(4673).
Para víctimas de cualquier delito, que incluye apoyo a familiares de víctimas de homicidio, llama al: 866-689-HELP (4357)
Para sobrevivientes de violación y agresión sexual, llama al: 212-227-3000.

Llama al 311 para pedir información de la Ciudad de Nueva York y servicios que no sean urgentes.
En situaciones de emergencia, llama al 911.

More information and Service providers

Urban Justice Center  - Domestic Violence Project (718) 875-5062 
Sanctuary for Families (212) 349-6009

Safe Horizon (800) 621-4673

Find your Domestic Violence Service Provider based on your county (NY State)

https://www.nyscadv.org/find-help/program-directory.html

Finally, Some (Rent) Relief: The Experience of Undocumented Folks Struggling to Make Rent During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Nicholas Rodrigo — Wed, 02 Feb 2022 15:14:04 +0000

By: Melissa Frasco

Making rent is never easy, and it has become especially difficult during the Covid-19 pandemic. If you lived in New York City pre-Covid you were probably paying rent. Some people live with family, some own their homes/apartments, but for many paying rent is the just a way of living. Couple this context with the amount of renters in NYC with the severity of the pandemic, financial instability, and lack of protections for renters and you have a recipe for turmoil.

Over the past eighteen months I worked mostly with undocumented people who had rent troubles. Some had apartments that they had lived in for five even ten years that they were no longer able to afford. With the trouble paying rent finding another apartment or room to rent is hard enough while being undocumented. Even though it is illegal to deny someone a lease or lease renewal based on their immigration status. Due to the ways that social institutions function in the city it often does not benefit undocumented people to share their undocumented status (unless for example with services providers and medical professionals which are HIPAA compliant.) For service providers, like my program, which only worked with undocumented folks we stared into gaping policy holes that left vulnerable people with even less coverage during the pandemic.

We saw most families who were ineligible for stimulus checks, who had no chance in applying for subsidized housing due to lack of documentation, and those who had the mindset that would not be any programs to help with financial situation. For a change, there was hope this time, with a new program called Emergency Rental Assistance Program or ERAP for short. I started gathering every resource I could find in Spanish to offer to clients in a text message that would act as a virtual packet for any questions and resources they may need to apply.

ERAP sounded like a dream come true, it was the second rental assistance program that undocumented folks were able to apply for. The first being the Covid Rent Relief program which was much was less expansive. This new program allowed people to apply if they had lost work, wages, or their job and experienced financial hardship since the start of the pandemic (dated as March 13, 2020 on the application). They also allowed people to apply for any apartment or room they had been renting and unable to afford rent due to these hardships. This program allowed participants to provide proof of residency without a proper lease, as many landlords will take advantage of undocumented renters and ask for cash or payment without a proper lease agreement. Being without a proper lease does not deny any renter their rights as a tenant. Aside from their part of the application the renters also had to have their landlords participate and fill out their half of the application. Soon we saw encountered many barriers hostile landlords, language barriers, and technological barriers for both renters and landlords. Due to the ongoing pandemic all applications had to be completed online, many of the people I worked with only having phones to do so. There were and still are helpful call centers available who provided support to applicants and landlords. Not all landlords were difficult to work with in this process but for undocumented people there is a greater power imbalance for them to work with a landlord. Many landlords were just as stuck and financially drained as some of the people I worked with, but this did not mean they were understanding of a tenant’s situation.

This program opened June 1st, 2021 and closed November 14th, 2021 due to a large majority of the funding running out for most counties in New York state, including the five boroughs. I want to close this blog on a somewhat happy note. Besides the long wait time, (most clients had applied back in July and August and were still waiting on responses) I helped one more client call to check her application status in late December. I called with the client on the phone, who we will refer to as Tina (not her real name), and dialed the ERAP call center for assistance. I acted as a translator to facilitate the conversation and explain faster what our situation was. Tina gave me the necessary information that I parroted back in English to the operator. She took some time to look up the information and told me that Tina’s application had been accepted for rental and utilities assistance. Because the application was for rent owed between March 13, 2020 until December 31, 2021 Tina had qualified for just over $20,000 in assistance due to demonstrated financial need. This was great news, I quickly wrote down the information and repeated it back to Tina in Spanish, she was overjoyed but of course had some questions. She asked how she could receive the assistance and if they would be able to tell her about the utilities part as she was worried about her heat being turned off in December.

Before we get ahead of ourselves this payment is not just cash that can be used for anything, and it does not even go directly to Tina or any other applicant. The ERAP program instead puts their trust in the landlords to receive and fully apply this one time payment to the rent arrears of the recipient. The applicant is also notified by email at the same time the assistance is received by the landlord. If there are any issues or the landlord does not update the applicant applicants are told they should contact the call center to confirm if it was received.

The final step of this program creates an even larger power imbalance between all renters and landlords, but especially for renters who are undocumented and have never received any assistance like this before. The other issue we faced was that for the utilities part of the application Tina and no other renters had received any assistance yet. The operator explained that Tina was approved for utility assistance but the city, ERAP, and the utility companies had not reached an agreement yet on how to assist those who qualified (more than a half year since the program was created). It would be easy to be focused on all the success that this program achieved; in Tina’s case her rent arrears were seemingly taken care of in one phone call (after months of waiting). However, there are much more glaring issues still at play, Tina did receive some assistance, with the hope that her landlord will apply all of her assistance correctly and does not misuse it, and she is still without utility assistance despite being approved. The truth is Tina and many other applicants are still left in vulnerable positions. For applicants, half of their financial wound is starting to heal with the help of rent assistance, but the lack of utility assistance is just adding insult to injury. As of January 7th, 2022 there has been no new updates on any extra funding to replenish the Emergency Rental Assistance Program.

To be clear despite its challenges NYC does actually have a fair amount of renter resources for information which I will list below:

Frequently asked question for ERAP (Emergency Rental Assistance Program)

https://otda.ny.gov/programs/emergency-rental-assistance/faq.asp

ERAP Contact Information

Call center hours will be:
Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. – 7 p.m.

Contact us by phone: (844-691-7368)
For the hearing impaired, TTY phone number: 1-833-843-8829

The ABCs of Housing is HPD's guide to housing rules and regulations for owners and tenants.

Owners and tenants have legal responsibilities to each other. HPD is one of many city and state agencies that enforce those responsibilities. This booklet is designed to help owners and tenants gain an understanding of the rules and regulations affecting housing, and to provide information about how to receive assistance.

Inside the guide you will find information about owners' and tenants' rights and responsibilities, staying in your apartment safely, resources for new affordable housing or rental assistance, and useful contact information for other housing related issues

English guide to housing rules and regulations for owners and tenants.

https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/hpd/downloads/pdfs/services/abcs-of-housing.pdf

Español Derechos y responsabilidades de propietarios e inquilinos

https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/hpd/downloads/pdfs/services/abcs-of-housing-spanish.pdf

Access this guide in more languages below

https://www1.nyc.gov/site/hpd/services-and-information/tenants-rights-and-responsibilities.page

Hardships and the Holidays: “It has been 15 years since I’ve seen my family”

Nicholas Rodrigo — Wed, 02 Feb 2022 15:08:05 +0000

By: Melissa Frasco

The Christmas season has not been easy for everyone. This year may not be very different for some. Last year my family contracted Covid-19 a week before Christmas, and we all spent it together quarantined. Thankfully some neighbors left us holiday treats on the porch. This year we were lucky enough to be together: happy, healthy, and vaccinated (to prevent a repeat of last year). As I was home scrolling somewhat aimlessly through Facebook I came across the story of a mutual friend. I never spoke to him much before, but when I was in college and returned from a community service trip in Central America I spoke to him about his home country. He had such beautiful descriptions of his homeland, and he even still had some family there. After this connection we would make small talk in Spanish when our paths crossed.

It was just a few days ago I was brought back to his story on Facebook. He had a picture of plane and the caption “It has been 15 years since I have seen my family”. He never told me out right that he crossed the border to reach the United States, but from his travels and some mutual friends I had figured it out. The idea of not being able to return to one’s home country is painfully common for undocumented folks. It is also new pain for many of those like myself who have never these barriers placed on which family we could visit.

Contrary to more recent times the U.S. – Mexico border had been quite permeable. With mostly migrant men crossing the border to work and then return home with their earnings. These types of excursions were no less grueling but much more common and allowed circular migration. Therefore, connections were maintained on either side of the border.

The few years have seen increases of border apprehensions, militarization of the border, and increases in migrant death. If you have seen the any of the news covering the border situation you have seen that it is not just men crossing. There are women, children, and families making extremely dangerous journeys to only be subjected to punitive policies of border politics. Although I could write a separate blog on the unjust practices at the southern border, this blog will focus on the holiday experiences of the undocumented families I have worked with.

People do not just choose to stop visiting the visiting their families. Rather policies prevent families from being together, this has gone on long before the Covid-19 pandemic. Currently the necessary precautions need to be taken to contain these uncertain times. Aside from being unable to return to your country of origin families on one side of the border still face hardships.

At the start of December, I was receiving requests for toy distribution drives. Most families involved single moms trying to pull off Christmas, caught between not having enough work and not having someone to babysit the children when they did have work. For other families a church or school sometimes could pick up the slack for food around the holidays. For toys the work becomes a bit harder, luckily in the two weeks leading up to Christmas I was able to find three local events with toy distribution. Unlike food donations which usually can subsist on one or two locations toy distributions go fast. More than one client I worked with expressed interests in toy distributions, but worried about showing up to a place where the toys had run out (which had happened more than once).

Working with these families they are often of mixed status, their children are born in the U.S. (therefore are U.S. citizens) and their parents are undocumented as they were born in a different country. Getting work during the pandemic has been hard enough, getting extra work while being undocumented presents a whole new set of challenges. Typically, as soon as clients go for jobs which request a social security number, they are facing a dead-end, other times not even able to complete applications. Their work becomes more and more sporadic, sometimes work is babysitting for a friend or cleaning someone’s house for a few hours.

To assist these families, I look for community type events where there may be food, music, events for children, and a toy distribution if we are lucky. For those in the most vulnerable situations it is often left to community organizers and charities to pick up the slack. Though their kindness warms the hearts of many these families should not have to rely on the generosity of others to have a holiday with their family. Undocumented folks do not only share our experiences of hardship in the pandemic, but they also face the complications of their own legal status and limited resources.

This year my heart goes out to all those who have lost someone during the pandemic. Especially to those whose loved ones passed away in different countries. They were unable to visit them during the pandemic and possibly for years before that. My heart goes out to all the families just trying to make the holidays happen despite their circumstances.

Suggested Reading

Books:

Greg Grandin. 2019. The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America. Metropolitan Books. https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/36743029-the-end-of-the-myth

Todd Miller. 2019. Empire of Borders: The Expansion of the US Border Around the World. Verso. https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/42509298-empire-of-borders

Jamie Longazel and Miranda Cady Hallett. 2021. Migration and Mortality: Social Death, Dispossession, and Survival in the Americas. Temple University Press. https://tupress.temple.edu/book/20000000010299

Articles:

Massey, Douglas S et al. “Why Border Enforcement Backfired.” AJS; American journal of sociology vol. 121,5 (2016): 1557-1600. doi:10.1086/684200

In this article we undertake a systematic analysis of why border enforcement backfired as a strategy of immigration control in the United States. We argue theoretically that border enforcement emerged as a policy response to a moral panic about the perceived threat of Latino immigration to the United States propounded by self-interested bureaucrats, politicians, and pundits who sought to mobilize political and material resources for their own benefit. The end result was a self-perpetuating cycle of rising enforcement and increased apprehensions that resulted in the militarization of the border in a way that was disconnected from the actual size of the undocumented flow. Using an instrumental variable approach, we show how border militarization affected the behavior of unauthorized migrants and border outcomes to transform undocumented Mexican migration from a circular flow of male workers going to three states into an eleven-million person population of settled families living in 50 states.

Undocumented and Uninsured: Surviving the Covid-19 Pandemic Without Health Insurance

Nicholas Rodrigo — Wed, 15 Dec 2021 17:09:06 +0000

Melissa Frasco

The Coronavirus Pandemic has brought unforeseen changes to each of our lives. However, the pandemic has affected some of us more than others. For the past eighteen months I have been working remotely with the undocumented population in an NYC area devastated by Covid-19. I have had hundreds of phone calls with individuals discussing their needs and how I could connect them to resources. Speaking with clients, health insurance was one of the topics that would come up again and again. For many of us we do not have to think twice about making an appointment with our primary care doctor. For the undocumented clients I have worked with their immigration status has prevented them from seeking appropriate medical care. Some clients I spoke with had not seen a primary care doctor in almost a decade.

Most often clients are afraid of the costs associated with doctors and hospitals. They are also ineligible for most other insurances (often due to lack of identification or Social Security Number). The program I worked with was specifically designed for people who did not have any type of health insurance. At most clients would have Emergency Medicaid, which does not function as traditional insurance, but could be used only in emergencies (such as a car accident). Otherwise, for primary care needs we worked to give clients instructions on how to enroll in NYC Care. Although I have a few critiques of this program, it is perhaps one of the most accessible health plans in New York City. NYC Care is a low cost and no cost health care access program open to all New York City residents who cannot afford or qualify for traditional health insurance. The requirements to be eligible for NYC Care are simple, one must have lived in the city for at least six months, have a photo ID (people may use a photo ID from their country of origin), a letter describing their financial situation, and proof of address. You may have noticed that I have not referred to NYC Care as an insurance plan, that is because it is considered a health access plan. This program provides access to primary care, some specialty care, and low-cost prescriptions. NYC Care does not function outside of NYC Health + Hospitals, limiting participants to often underfunded and overwhelmed locations.

As I mentioned before, I do appreciate this program and I know many people who have benefitted from NYC Care. However, I have also seen some glaring gaps in coverage, one of the most obvious being lack of dental coverage. Dental services such as a cleaning or a filling may be easy to come by, as some hospitals do provide low-cost dental services. Although not all hospitals have this service, and if someone with NYC Care were to need a more invasive procedure they could be turned away from many low-cost dental services in hospitals. This is because NYC Care is not billable as an insurance agency would be. I have worked to find for clients where they could get a root canal. What I have been told by hospital employees is that they could not take anyone who needed a type oral surgery (such as a root canal). As this would result in clients without insurance being stuck with the bill. Although someone may have an dental emergency need Emergency Medicaid would most likely not be able to cover it for those without any other insurance. What would end up being the most helpful for clients with dental needs would be to refer them to low-cost dental services providers. There they would have the option to be enrolled in a pay-scale based on income so that they could only be billed for what they could afford.

It was not often I could tell clients about free medical services, but thankfully the Covid-19 vaccines and testing were free resources I could share with them. Many of them at first would ask if the test and vaccines were actually free, and I would explain again that they were. For those who are undocumented there is more to consider than just vaccine hesitancy and questions. For many vulnerable clients there was fear of hospital visits, most often for financial worries, but some clients I had to convince that if they went to the hospital they would not be reported to ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement). As citizenship status is protected under HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) and NYC public hospitals must be HIPAA compliant I was able to ensure clients that their citizenship status would not be shared with anyone else. For a majority of clients they had this notion that they did not have any rights or access to vital resources, such as medical care. This was a common misconception among older established immigrants and more recent arrivals. By default, a large amount of my work was informing people of their right to medical care, translation services.

This blog has only begun to scratch the surface in discussing access to healthcare for undocumented immigrants. The healthcare situation changes and become more complex for mixed status families and those who are pregnant. This is by now means an exhaustive account, but these are some of the most common issues I came across working with the undocumented Spanish speaking population. Below I have left more information regarding NYC Care and their information for immigrants, and an article complied by the National Immigrant Law Center on questions people may have on the vaccine and their immigration status.

NYC Care: Seek Care Without Fear

https://www.nychealthandhospitals.org/immigrant/

Answers to Common Questions about Immigrants’ Access to the COVID-19 Vaccines https://www.nilc.org/2021/04/12/immigrant-access-to-the-covid-19-vaccines/

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End the Double Displacement of Vietnamese Refugees

Nicholas Rodrigo — Thu, 24 Oct 2019 20:23:02 +0000

-Colleen Chung

Imagine, for a second, that your home country has all of a sudden erupted into civil war. You find yourself on the “wrong side” of the political divide, living in constant fear that you will one day face government retaliation in the form of violence or even death. Besides having to witness your friends and family members being imprisoned and their homes destroyed by bombs, you have been living a life of near-impoverishment. There is never enough food, water, and resources to go around the community during the war. You haven’t gone to school in years and any hope that you will ever attend is destroyed. All the while, conditions are worsening to the point that you and your family are now considering drastic action: fleeing to the United States. The journey is grueling and will traumatize you for years, as you have to cross the South China Sea in an overcrowded vessel battling disease, starvation, and even pirates. Nonetheless, you find yourself at the mercy of an entirely new country. You are starting life all over again with absolutely no resources, support, or language skills, excluded to the confines of a low-income community with few opportunities for social mobility. As the months go by, you are still barely able to pull yourself out of poverty. Joining a gang seems the only viable option to increase your stock in life, and so, you commit a “crime” to feed your family, protect yourself, pay the bills, whatever your needs are at the moment. You are then arrested by the police, given a harsh sentence disproportionate to the gravity of the crime, and your Green card is revoked. As a stateless refugee, you have no choice but to comply and serve your time. After your release years later and having established your own business in the community, you are told that due to changes in US-Vietnam relations, your past crime that you have just served time for makes you eligible for deportation and being sent back to the country you fled from years ago.

This is the reality hundreds of Vietnamese-Americans are facing as they await final deportation orders for crimes they committed as minors in the midst of poverty. In March of 2017, ICE began rounding up and detaining an estimated 8,000 immigrants, among them a couple hundred Cambodian and Vietnamese immigrants with criminal records, most of whom were refugees. Eleven Vietnamese immigrants ended up being deported. Although the Trump administration backtracked on deportation efforts for a while, it is now arguing that it can deport Vietnamese refugees if they have committed acts that render them ineligible to remain in the U.S., since the 2008 repatriation agreement does not explicitly prohibit such removals. This reinterpretation is flagrant deal-breaking of the protection from deportation clause on the part of the administration; and it is paving the way for ICE to unjustly re-arrest released detainees and intimidate them into deporting themselves. The vast majority of these crimes Vietnamese-Americans are charged for and deported over are not even violent. Most are minor, nonviolent infractions such as petty larceny, drug possession, and driving under the influence- all deportable offenses under the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA). Considering the double displacement and trauma these refugees have faced both in Vietnam and now the U.S., the government could do better to drop these long-forgotten charges.

Not only would detaining and deporting Vietnamese immigrants for crimes they committed as impoverished teenagers put them in danger of state persecution upon return, it inflicts further state violence upon the very people who fled state violence during the Vietnam War, for which the U.S. was involved in. It is also bad policy based on unfounded, anti-immigrant claims that all immigrants pose a threat to public safety (in fact, a study by the Immigration Policy Center found that 68% of legal permanent residents who are deported are deported for minor, nonviolent crimes; only 0.46% of Vietnamese immigrant men ages 18-39 were incarcerated as opposed to 0.57% of non-Hispanic white immigrant men in 2000-https://www.policefoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Appendix-D_0.pdf). Katrina Mariategue of the Southeast Asia Resource Action Center summed up the psychosocial aspect of further state violence on the Vietnamese refugee community best: “Just remember that a lot of the challenges and struggles Southeast-Asian Americans face in the country is also a result of the fact that they weren’t supported in many ways upon entry to the country. A lot of them who ended up being incarcerated resettled in communities with high poverty and crime rates. That is a good history lesson in terms of how we support new refugee communities.”

Colleen Chung is an M.A. Candidate at The Graduate Center, CUNY whose research focuses on the intersections of law and public policy. She is the proud daughter of two Vietnamese refugees.

Deported Veterans Shouldn’t Exist

Nicholas Rodrigo — Thu, 24 Oct 2019 19:56:31 +0000

- Jasmine Gonsalez

“‘Deported veterans…Think about that for a second,’” Kai Ryssdal tweeted in November 2017. As a well-known public radio host and journalist, Ryssdal’s response to a viral photo showing a group of deported veterans in Juarez, Mexico commemorating Memorial Day prompted thousands of his shocked followers to question how the words “deported” and “veteran” could even be in the same sentence. As responsible citizens, shouldn’t we be asking ourselves and our elected representatives why committing the ultimate act of national allegiance like enlisting in the military, and serving and protecting this country is not enough to be considered worthy of American citizenship?

According to the National Immigration Forum, there are about 40,000 immigrants serving in the military as of 2017, and only the Congressional Hispanic Caucus has estimates on deported veterans, amounting to roughly 3,000 documented cases. The lack of official data and statistics on this group mirrors the government’s apathy and devaluation of immigrant contributions to this country as a whole.

One such case is that of Carlos Jaime Torres. On December 14, 2018, the TWICE-deported veteran who fought in Vietnam, was laid to rest in the Rio Grande Valley State Veterans Cemetery in Mission, Texas. Deported veterans are prohibited from stepping on US soil, however, once dead, they have the right to be transported back and buried with full military honors. It is difficult to ignore the tragic irony of veterans like Torres being permitted back on US soil upon death but being denied stay or entry alive.

It would be easy to blame this abhorrent practice on the current administration, as President Trump’s rhetoric is not only anti-immigrant and racist, he also seems to have adopted negative views on veterans. Some examples include his dehumanization of immigrants by calling them “animals” and “rapists” and increasing family separations, reinforcing the stigma around veterans suffering from PTSD, and famously disparaging the late John McCain’s service because of his capture and torture in Vietnam.

However, it will come as a surprise to most that it is not Trump’s administration who began deporting servicemen and women. Again, with no exact record keeping by the government on this matter it is hard to say when the practice started, though an ACLU report found that “deported veterans were in the US legally and sustained physical wounds and emotional trauma in conflicts as far back as the war in Vietnam.” To clarify, these findings include the deportation of veterans beginning at least as far back as the Ford administration, all through the Clinton years, and even under Obama.

Sadly, this despicable practice is one of the few issues that has been allowed to continue through the bipartisan tradition of creating immigration laws meant to exclude and punish, while also making the path to citizenship a near impossible-to-complete labyrinth. Instead, immigrant soldiers have had to listen to the Commander in Chief when he sends them off to war, and yet cannot vote for him. They are sent to command posts around the world but are denied American passports to freely travel. Their bravery it seems, is only acknowledged in death.

While we look towards servicemen and woman as shining examples in patriotism, courage, and love of country, the service of immigrants in the military who hold these same values is discounted and forgotten once they try to legally become part of American society. As the traditional imperialist history of this country dictates, we use immigrant soldiers for their service, and discard them through deportations once they become useless. As a peace offering, we offer them crumbs in the form of military funerals.

Instead of sitting back and letting history repeat itself by denying immigrant veterans American citizenship, we need to fight for their rights just as much as they have fought to serve and protect us. Rather than creating laws to exclude and remove, or build walls to divide, we must re-write the history books to fully recognize how immigrant veterans have helped build this country and kept it safe. As media outlets start to cover this topic more, it is a welcome change to see bipartisan efforts from Texan Senator Vicente Gonzalez (D) and Alaskan Senator Don Young (R) in proposing a bill that would grant citizenship to immigrants currently serving, and repatriate deported veterans. While we can never fully repay these veterans for their sacrifice, granting them citizenship is a good first step.

Jasmine Gonsalez is an International Migration Studies Masters student currently working on her Master’s thesis exploring the influence of immigrant family culture on Second Generation Latinx Student’s decisions to take out loans in order to pursue a higher education.

The Savage Reality of the Black Immigrant Experience

Nicholas Rodrigo — Mon, 11 Feb 2019 16:58:56 +0000

21 Savages detainment by ICE is emblematic of the broader experiences of undocumented Black immigrants in the US

By Nick Rodrigo

On the January 29th, the award winning hip-hop artist 21 Savage (real name Sha Yaa Bin Abraham-Joseph) performed “A lot” from his number one album “I am > I was”. In his physical rendition for the Today Show, 21 delivered a third verse addressing immigration and the Flint water crisis:

Lights was out, the gas was off so we had to boil up the water

Went through some things, but I couldn’t imagine my kids stuck at the border

Flint still need water,

Five days later, Abraham-Joseph and fellow rapper Young Nudy (Quantavious Thomas) pulled over by DeKalb county police in Atlanta. Thomas, a target of a criminal arrest for assault and gang charges, was booked into DeKalb jail. After conducting background checks of Abraham-Thomas’ immigration status, standard operating procedure in the state of Georgia, it was discovered that the rapper was actually a British citizen. Further investigation, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency Brian Cox indicated that. “Mr. Abraham-Joseph is unlawfully present in the U.S. and also a convicted felon. Mr. Abraham-Joseph initially entered the U.S. legally in July 2005, but subsequently failed to depart under the terms of his nonimmigrant visa” – he is currently being held in ICE custody, without Bond. In a press release, Abraham-Josephs lawyer noted that his client is awaiting a U-Visa application as the victim of a crime, and his detention is based on incorrect information about a prior charge. Although his lawyers seem to be working overtime, the threat of deportation looms large.

In his today show performance, Abraham-Joseph touched on two political crisis’s afflicting this country -the Flint Michigan water crisis, and the hardening nativist agenda gripping immigration policy. The former has widely been acknowledged as disproportionately effecting African American communities in Flint. However the enforcement of the deportation regime also asymmetrically effects Black immigrants, Abraham-Josephs entrance into this unforgiving system is but a high profile example of a common experience of undocumented Black immigrants.

Estimates suggest that there are around 575,000 Black unauthorized immigrants in the United States as of 2013 – most coming from countries in the Global South. In comparison, there are 1.4 million Asians and more than 8 million from Mexico and Latin America. This large pool of undocumented immigrants from Asia and Latin America has resulted in vast array of support networks and programs in which take into account the culturally and materially specific needs of these communities. These systems of support have not emerged to the same level for Black undocumented migrants, and their specific experiences with the criminal justice and immigration system, does not receive the proper coverage.

The policy of deporting immigrants for criminal acts is as long as the history of forced removals itself, but the process of sweeping undocumented migrants into removal proceedings through criminalization on an industrial scale began with the passage of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA). Legal immigrants, including green-card holders, could be deported for a vast array of crimes, some of which are not even violent, with IIRIRA making many of them being applied retroactively – in the decades that followed a “crimmigration” regime crystalized.

Studies suggest that across the US, black people are more likely to be stopped, arrested and incarcerated. Black people are arrested at 2.5 times the rate of whites and are more likely than whites to be sentenced to prison and less likely to be sentenced to probation. Through this hyper-criminalization, Black immigrants are disproportionately vulnerable to deportation. The criminal justice system acts like a funnel for Black citizens into the prison system, and black denizens into the immigration system. President Obama’s focus on undocumented migrants with criminal convictions did not address the structural and pervasive anti blackness baked into the practices of local law enforcement. Traffic stops by local law enforcement have been highlighted by Black Lives Matter activists to be flash point for police brutality of Black citizens, but for undocumented migrants it can be the beginning of the long path to deportation – as documented by a 2016 report by the Black Alliance for Just Immigration and the NYU Legal Clinic. Within the undocumented migrant population, individuals are 3.5 times more likely to be detained for an immigration violation than a criminal conviction –but Caribbean immigrants are twice more likely to be detained for criminal convictions than a violation of immigration laws. Finally, it is worth breaking down the numbers when it comes to the types of deportation orders black immigrants’ face. Returns, as defined by DHS, as the “confirmed movement of an inadmissible or deportable alien out of the United States not based on an order of removal”. Typically a returned immigrant can reapply to enter the US, but may face additional bars upon returning. For DHS, a removal is defined as the “compulsory and confirmed movement of an inadmissible or deportable alien out of the US based on an order of removal”. Deportations based on a removal order contain bars to reentry =, from five years to life, as well as enhanced criminal penalties if the removed immigrant reenters without authorization – this can be up to twenty years in jail if deported on the basis of an aggravated felony. In 2013 three quarters of black immigrants were removed on criminal grounds, in contrast to less than half of immigrants overall.

Donald Trump’s 2016 election platform had a number of policy pledges to be tough on crime and immigration, playing on the moral panic of his base around a “deviant fifth column” within the US, and “hordes of immigrant gangs” amassed at the border. These twin projects are having a disastrous consequences for undocumented migrants across the board, but for Black migrants it is being compounded by historical weight of a biased criminal justice system and police enforcement hard wired to control and brutalize black bodies. In recent days, celebrities have come out in support of Joseph-Abrahams, with Grammy winning rapper Cardi B noting that her fellow artist has deep ties to Atlanta, despite not being from there:

This final fact is also true of undocumented black migrants facing deportation – they have well established community ties. As mass support builds for Abrahams-Joseph, off the back of his stardom and the high profile nature of his case, we must remember the particularities of his experience to black migrants, and incorporate those into our broader campaigns for immigration justice.

SIGN THE PETITION TO STOP THE DEPORTATION OF 21 SAVAGE HERE

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Trump, Moral Panics and Resistance

Nicholas Rodrigo — Thu, 10 Jan 2019 17:02:15 +0000

By Professor David Brotherton

From the outset of Donald Trump’s campaign for the Presidency the infamous New York billionaire made it clear that the tactic of moral panic would be his chosen route to making it all the way to the White House. Like many politicians of the wealthy classes before him, threatening images of the “dangerous classes” were used wantonly to illustrate the common sense behind his ultra-conservative solutions to social and economic problems caused by fundamental disenfranchisement, inequality and poverty. Thus, the Trump campaign have treated us incessantly to scabrous descriptions of human beings who are supposedly arrayed against our innocent American sensibilities. They came thick and fast in the form of immigrant Mexican rapists, black urban gang bangers, Latino drug dealers and Muslim terrorists, among others. In each case, of course, it was always Donald the righteous who would save us from ourselves and thereby from these modern day “folk devils.”

Trump would not be the first Republican Presidential candidate to employ such tried and tested racialized “others” to reach the desired levels of fear and loathing among his supporters. Nixon in 1968 invoked the image of the “silent majority” encircled by rioting urban blacks and rampaging students, Reagan in 1976 used the specter of the black “welfare queen” to symbolize the “waste” of the entitlement system, George H. W. Bush in 1988 conjured the black rapist in the guise of Willie Horton to highlight the misplaced liberalism of his challenger Michael Dukakis, while George W. Bush appealed to the ongoing enemy of post-9/11 Islamic terrorism to shore up his inept time in office. But no one other than Trump has so brazenly, single-mindedly and arguably successfully used the moral panic strategy to advance his ambitions for public office.

Why then has this tactic of systematic lies, distortion and hyperbole gone from being so effective in the earlier stages of his presidential run now to be in tatters such that a journalist at Trump’s first solo press conference after just over three weeks in the job asked him, “Why should America trust you?” Meanwhile, as of writing, the renowned Pew Research Center announces that Trump’s approval ratings are once more at “historic lows” and hitting the 39 percent mark, in stark contrast to Obama who was getting 64 percent during the same time in his first presidency and even George W. Bush who was at 53 percent during his initial go at playing commander-in-chief.

To understand this turn of events it is important to consider how the pioneers of the concept saw the moral panic as a process with a life cycle and not at all as a “big lie” machine that was entirely sustainable. They all pointed out that the groups, persons or communities singled out by “right thinking people” through scapegoating and stereotypification reflected unresolved social anxieties produced by a social control system unable to base itself any longer on a moral consensus. They concurred that the more a regime depends on moral panics to govern the more it undermines its own legitimacy which is precisely what we are witnessing in the present White House melt-down. Such a regime through its addiction to its own rhetoric eventually sews the seeds of its own destruction.

Several British sociologists were at the forefront of this research. Stan Cohen, one of the first to coin the phrase while describing the media frenzy in the ‘60s over brawling English “mods and rockers” saw that it was youth’s embrace of hedonism and consumption undermining the message of disciplined work and restraint that was really at stake. Jock Young, who studied the public condemnation of “drug-takers” during the same period, concluded that the social interventions did more harm than the so-called “deviant” behavior (the U.S. War on Drugs is an ongoing example). Meanwhile, Stuart Hall described Margaret Thatcher’s discovery of young black “muggers” terrorizing English inner-cities as more about her commitment to be the virus that killed socialism and the global project of hyper-wealth concentration and inequality (what we now call “neo-liberalism”) than any concern over crime rates. Consequently, moral panics are never things in themselves no matter how self-serving. Further, they will always eventually motivate much larger sectors of society to question the legitimacy of both the diagnoses and policies that follow while encouraging new bonds of solidarity with those populations most targeted and vilified.

What we currently witness therefore is a moral panic process that instead of functioning as a unified narrative that constantly injects momentum into the various apparatuses of ideological production, pushing us ever closer to the practices of tyranny and dictatorial necessity, instead becomes the very object of our scorn and disbelief. This growing opposition to the cynical manipulation of our fears and vulnerabilities, whether real or imagined, in turn prompts us to envision a quite different world in which to resolve our social discontent and political unhappiness.

We see this with each Trumpian Punch and Judy show, a debilitating spectacle that has become both the form and essence of the Presidential regime. In response we, the people, recoil in disgust and amazement at the level to which our fellow human beings have debased themselves while we also begin to realize and accept the fallacy of our political fantasy, i.e., that we have been living in a world that pretentiously refers to itself as fundamentally democratic.

In other words, the dialectics of the moral panic now ensure that we not only participate in the death agony of what one Guardian writer describes as “a terrible mistake” but in the unraveling of society’s general fabric. It is not that the Emperor has no clothes but rather the whole neo-liberal project becomes revealed in all its stark naked ugliness along with the body politic that has enabled it. These are definitely new times. From where I sit the removal of Trump and his gaggle of know-nothings will only be the beginning as we enter a time when the future is truly up for grabs.

This article was originally posted in Counterpunch on February 27, 2017.

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The Intentional De-cohesion in Deportability

Nicholas Rodrigo — Mon, 22 Oct 2018 17:03:47 +0000

By Talha İşsevenler

“The logics of democratic states may therefore be more complex than is often assumed. First, they are confronted by contradictory interests groups with employers generally desirous of the cheap and docile workforce of immigrants, while general public shows signs of impatience or xenophobia towards aliens.” (p. 218, Didier Fassin, 2011)

"How does it happen that the state will do a host of things that the individual would never countenance? -Through division of responsibility, of command, and of execution." (p. 383, Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power)

One could argue that immigration detention takes part of an overall process in which the possibility of locating the source of political decisions and hence responsibility has been long made disappeared within the diffused network of institutions and practices of governance. For instance, researchers observed "the outsourcing of detention to private actors or to subnational governmental entities as a form of delegating responsibility to reduce costs and avoid legal issues." (p. 151, Flynn and Flynn) Formal gaps between those who produce the rationality of policy, those who benefit from it, and those who are given the task of executing it, often in spontaneous and arbitrary ways, are not the only sources of disappearance of responsibility in the networks of power that reproduce the regime of deportation.

More deeply, we must show that there are multiple epistemologies through which undocumented immigrants are brought to the view of power –on economical, historical, bodily, cultural grounds. At times it is their personal body which is marked by power through the gaze of raiding ICE officer, at times they gain visibility and a chance of futurity solely through access to bureaucratic documents which mediates their life-chances through official channels and at times their physical body does not even exist as such within the view of power, it is the massive population as an object in-itself linked to other macro-variables that is constructed and targeted in the biopolitical calculations which ground practices of deportation. Thus, repressive and ideological instruments are neither organized coherently nor grounded in the same epistemology, effectively making it extremely difficult to pinpoint the sovereign center which can be held responsible for the process. There is not a smooth semantic transition between different domains where reality of deportability is produced. Immigration detention centers capture bodies within their permanently transitory temporalities, political economical rationality invests in the management of disposable workforce by abstract calculations and cultural representations performatively creating a popular truth of ‘criminal immigrant’ attempting to transgress national border while in realitymost of the undocumented immigrants sustain everyday lives within the borders.

The dissonance between different epistemologies and separation of moments of power into different institutions are not accidental but help secure first distribution and then finally evaporation of responsibility. The deportation regime is a complex process of depersonalization and massification of human lives which are then re-individualized where singular lives become casesthrough vast machinery of security complex that is expanded and solidified in the post 9-11 political climate.

“DHS Appropriation Act of 2010 first introduced a daily bed-capacity mandate of 33.400, additionally agency specified a target of 400.000 deportation a year.” Biopolitical decisions are made at the level of population by setting numbers of people to be deported per year effectively maintaining action-at-a-distance, yet "when problems arise those at the lowest end of hierarchy face the direst circumstances, including job insecurity, dismal pay, and punitive action." (p. 131, ibid) This discrepancy between institutions and practices and legal power which sanctifies them is what Michel Foucault showed in his life-long work on the genealogy of forms of power. While political economical rationality regarding the demands for disposable and exploitable and thus “highly efficient” work-force may motivate emergence of certain immigration policies such as sustaining a flow of precarious and vulnerable of immigrants, the actual techniques and institutions which are given the role of realizing these goals cannot be reduced to this initial aim. The sheer profitability of detention system alongside the usefulness of having a scapegoat at times of systemic legitimacy crisis exceed the logic of political economy of labor market but does not necessarily contradict it. Foucault showed this mutual proliferation and evolution of law and disciplinary apparatus in his genealogical studies on discipline, punishment, prison, security and territory. The techniques employed in the prison cannot be reduced to internal logic of law or prison cannot be seen simply as an extension of law; prison has another history.Foucault argues that the modern prison took up ‘discipline’ as a technique which has long evolved from the ancient monasteries as a way of controlling bodies by subjecting them to a spatio-temporal arrangement where the gaze and the command of the ruler are internalized by the now docile bodies. To put it succinctly, in the modern forms of power, the command is first transformed into a rule and then the rule is transformed into a distributed design so that violence is exercised on populations without any particular subject seeming to have sovereign control over the process. This gives power a more neutral and natural view.

If disciplinary spaces of enclosure helped nation-state carve out docile citizens out of undifferentiated masses and maximize their output and ensure their consent the same set of practices equipped with new technological tools can make sure control of migrant flow and manage ‘illegal’ economical milieus and resources which are completely integrated to the rest of the economy.

Moreover, if we look at the people who animate and reproduce the processes that make up deportability we see that they live under extreme and uneven conditions of competition and confrontation which feed xenophobia, racism, violence or cultivation of a culture of vindictiveness. Moreover, the designed de-linking and de-politicization of spaces and discourses of command, execution, punishment and work lead to an overall lack of reflexive capacity and a lack of ability of re-making of the subjective life-world for people who live under the condition of deportability. Consequently, all these structural elements betray supposed rationality of bureaucratic organization and capitalist fantasies of efficiency.

“Statistical tests of restrictive immigration practices in major migrant-receiving countries reveal that more deportation and detention does not result in less immigration. furthermore, some studies have shown that when destination countries implement "alternative to detention" such as reporting procedures or conditional release, most people comply with immigration procedures and do not abscond.” (p. 117, Flynn and Flynn)
Given the apparent contradiction the practices of detention/deportation regime have with their supposed aim, it is safe to argue that more than ending the unauthorized immigration this complex ensures the continuity of post-Fordist economy premised on flexible labor, exclusion and insecurity coupled with a process of welfare retraction and wage compression.

Resources used in this blog post

● Critiquing zones of exception: actor-oriented approaches explaining the rise of immigration detention; Matthew B. Flynn, Georgia Southern University, Micheal Flynn, Global Detention Project in Immigration Policy in the Age Punishment: Detention, Deportation, Border Controled. By David Brotherton, Philip Kretsedemas, Columbia University Press,

● Migrant “Illegality” and Deportability in Everyday Life; Nicholas P. De Genova, Annual Review of Anthropology, 2002, 31:419-47

● Policing Borders Producing Boundaries: The Governmentality of Immigration in Dark Times, 2011, Didier Fassin, Annual Review of Anthropology, 40:213-16

● The Sociology of Vindictiveness and the Deportable Alienby David C. Brotherton and Sarah Tosh in Immigration Policy in the Age Punishment: Detention, Deportation, Border Controled. By David Brotherton, Philip Kretsedemas, Columbia University Press, 2017

● The Will to Power,Friedrich Nietzsche, Vintage Books, 1968

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U and T Visa protections are under attack: How sufficient are they in the first place?

Nicholas Rodrigo — Fri, 31 Aug 2018 22:18:41 +0000

In 2000 the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000was passed into law by the U.S. Congress and signed by President Clinton. The act created special visa categories, including the U-Visa and the T-Visa which offer protection to the victims of certain crimes committed in the United States, including domestic violence, sexual assault, human trafficking, female genital cutting and kidnap.

Applicants for U-Visa must demonstrate that they have suffered a credible degree of mental or physical traumaas a result of a crime, as well as certification from law enforcement official that they are currently, or will be useful in a criminal investigation or prosecution. The creation of these protections were to encourage the reporting of crimes, and solicit cooperation by immigrant communities with the police. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) caps the number of U Visas at around 10,000 per year, whilst Congress has limited the number of T visas to 5,000 per year.

Due to U-Visa and T-Visa program being implemented through Congressional laws,and not executive order, President Trump is not legally able to cancel these programs or even decrease the number unilaterally. Moreover, Trump has positioned combatting human trafficking as a key foreign policy issue for his administration, and thus a full-frontal assault on these provisions would be far from politically wise.

However, the Trump administration, and in particular Attorney General Geoff Sessions are so dedicated to remaking the US immigration system to appease the party’s nativist base that they have begun to undermine these protections through clandestine means. These have not only shown the administrations pontificating promises to combat people trafficking as hollow, but unveiled how fragile these protections are.

Victims of human trafficking, family members, and lawmakers listen as President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office at the White House before signing a new law aimed at curbing sex trafficking

On January 25 of this year, President Trump signed Executive Order 13768, Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States, which set forth the priorities for the removal of undocumented migrants from the country. In subsequent months the Department of Homeland Security moved swiftly to operationalize this Executive Order. Just over five months later USCIS issued a policy memorandum which specified that any people trafficking survivor who has applied for a T visa and is denied, will be placed in deportation proceedings. According to an Asian Pacific Institute on Gender-Based Violence survey released in May 43% of organizations which provide legal services to human trafficking and domestic violence survivors have had clients drop their pending T or U visa applications since January 20thof this year.Undocumented migrants would rather go underground then apply to protections legally. An ACLU survey of found that 82 percent of prosecutors questioned reportedthat since President Trump took office, domestic violence is not only underreported, but is harder to investigate and prosecute. Short term political points for Trumps base means that the number of pending immigration cases has shot up, creating a backlog of nearly 700,000.This backlog has prompted Jeff Sessions to intervene through his authority to modify or overrule immigration cases. In one instance Sessions assigned himself a casein which he would determine whether a Salvadoran Women, who was raped by her ex husband and threatened death by him, could fit the legal requirements for asylum. This landmark case could set a precedent which makes it harder for domestic violence survivors to receive asylum.

Through judicial discretion and a general hostile environment, the Trump administration is making it increasingly difficult for victims of human trafficking and domestic violence to escape potentially life-threatening situations. Part of this is down to the political winds which brought the Trump administration to office, namely an uncompromising anti-immigration agenda. But it is also the one-dimensional nature of the protections on offer. The T visa system is overwhelmingly focussed on utilising victims as tools of law enforcement, rather than assisting them based on their victim status -exposure not only puts their safety at risk, but also hands them to law enforcement agencies which have a number of mechanisms designed to determine whether their case is severe enough. In addressing Trumps attack on these limited provisions, advocates lawyers and social workers should draw attention not only to the detrimental effect on victims of human trafficking and domestic violence, but also push for not only an expansion of the T and U visa program. At the end of September 2017, there were 110,511 pending principle applications for U visas– making the wait time for one of these around 11 years. In addition to this, the criteria a victim must meet in order to be granted one of these visas must be put under review, as the concerns of the Attorney General and the Trump administration are on record as indicating that they have little concern for the well being of victims who meet them at the moment. A full and human rights based assessment of these protections must be endorsed in which the concerns of the victims and their rehabilitation is put first.

Trumps moral panic on MS-13 threatens Long Islands vulnerable Salvadoran community

Nicholas Rodrigo — Fri, 24 Aug 2018 17:16:05 +0000

For the 2018 State of the Union, President Donald Trump brought as his guests the parents of Nisa Mickens and Kayla Cuevas. Nisa and Kayla were two young girls from Long Island, who were chased down and brutally murdered by members of MS-13 gang in September 2016. During his address, Trump made reference to MS-13 and their operations in the US, citing his immigration policies as a key tool in defeating them. In a White House press release in May titled “What You Need to Know About The Violent Animals Of MS-13”New York communities were presented as suffering “tremendously from the abhorrent violence of MS-13”. On the same week of the publication of that Press Release, Trump stated at a roundtable discussion in Bethpage, Nassau County, Long Island that MS-13 gang members “are not people, they’re animals”.

In recent months the gang has captured the imagination of the Trump administration, with their well-documented brutal murders becoming synonymous with Barrack Obama’s perceived “open doors” immigration policy. The Trump administration is utilizing the constructed spectre of MS-13 to justify increasingly punitive immigration policies – including the revoking of measures designed to protect vulnerable immigrants and the expansion of institutions to find and deport undocumented migrants. These effects will be devasting upon New York state’s Salvadoran community, who are finding themselves caught up in the gamesmanship of the Trump administration.

Who are MS-13?

MS-13 is a transnational street gang whose roots date back to the early nineties in Los Angeles. The El Salvadoran civil war of the 1980s pitted left-wing revolutionaries against a US backed Junta which had ruled the country for decades.More than 75,000 Salvadorans were massacred in the fighting, most of them victims of the military and its death squads – armed and trained by Washington, forcing a mass aexodus from the country. Between 1985 and 1990, 334,000 Salvadorans reported entering the United States– many of them settling in LA. Originally a group of stoners and rockers,turned more violent due to targeting from other gangs, the increasing arrival of brutalized compatriots from central America, and racist mistreatment by the LAPD and broader criminal justice system. By 1996, the Salvadoran Civil War had come to an end, and with the passage of the Illegal Immigration and Immigrant Responsibility Act, large numbers of MS-13 members were deported back to El Salvador. These gang members were dumped in special prisons, which although reduced gang confrontations in the carceral system, allowed the group to consolidate a plan of action. By the early 2000’s the gang had managed to extend its franchise to the East Coast, and into Long Island, an area with a large Salvadoran community.

Salvadorans in Long Island

Salvadoran immigration to Long Island predates the civil war by several decades. Like with LA, it was the civil war which prompted large numbers seeking refuge in quiet towns and villages across the island. In 2001, an earthquake struck El Salvador, forcing many citizens to seek Temporary Protected Status- New York, is home to 16,200 Salvadoran TPS beneficiaries.According to statistics, over 47,000 Salvadorans living in Nassau County and a further 52,000+ in Suffolk. The concentration of Salvadorans in Long Island has promoted the consulate to open a branch in Brentwood, the first and currently only of its kind in the region.

The construction of a moral panic

Trump has utilized the racialized imagery of violent Central American youths, along with his promise to be tough on crime in order to construct a moral panic around Latino street gangs, with a particular focus on MS-13. This moral panic is in turn being converted into increasingly draconian immigration positions. With regards to undocumented migrants and deportation, Trump has specifically focussed on the argument that there are “glaring loopholes”in current asylum law, which allow illegal entry. In addition to this he has argued that gang members are entering the US as unaccompanied minors. The reality is either far more complex, or the opposite. For example, according to a June 2017 testimony by U.S. Border Patrol Acting Chief,only 159 unaccompanied alien children were confirmed or suspect of having gang affiliations, 56 of whom were suspected or confirmed of having MS-13 ties. Indeed MS-13 affiliated children accounts for less than 0.12 of apprehended unaccompanied minors between 2012 – 2017. Moreover, the claim that there are legal loopholes presents the US’s rather strict asylum laws as loose, when in reality it is difficult for even victims of gang violence to attain asylum in the US, let alone known gang associates.

Despite the paucity of these arguments, the Trump administration has moved to remove Temporary Protected Status visas, as well as increase the powers for immigration enforcement agencies to seize and deport undocumented migrants – a move that will build on the precarious status of Long Islands Salvadoran community.

The impact on Long Island

In January, President Trump announced he would end TPS for Salvadorans and others residing in the US under the program, arguing that the living conditions caused by the 2001 earthquake no longer exist. TPS recipients have been given 18 months to leave. Dan Stein, of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a think tank classified as a Hate Group by the Southern Poverty Law Group, has applauded the policy noting that TPS “was never intended to be used as a tool to sidestep the legal immigration process”. Salvadorans comprise the largest group protected by the program, numbering around 260,000 – with around 14,700 on Long Island. The effect of this removal will have far reaching economic effects for the economy of Long Island. According to analysis collated by the Suffolk Country Department of Economic Development and Planning, Long Island would lose a projected $800 million in household spending, the loss of 13,500 jobs and the $1.4 billion drop in economic output. The removal of parents of US citizens is likely to force thousands of young children into social care, and increase their potential exposure to MS-13 gangs. Another policy Trump is pursuing to combat MS-13 is the increased deployment of secure communities program which promotes ICE detainer requests by local police departments. Despite the fact they have not engaged in the 287(g) agreement with ICE, data indicates that Long Island’s law enforcement agencies are engaging with ICE to such a degree, that they may be violating the Fourth Amendment, as they are detaining immigrants without cause or legal authority. It is not only the violation of the US Constitution that is at risk through the increased engagement with ICE – law enforcement can alienate migrant communities and undermine their ability to cooperate, as reporting crimes may come with the risk of deportation. MS-13 may be presented as a street gang par excellence, but it operates best within communities under a blanket of silence. If Long Island law enforcement are interested in removing the scourge of MS-13 violence from their counties, then protections to those who suffer from it most acutely must be protected. Enhancing protections for vulnerable Salvadorans and other migrants will isolate MS-13 and greatly diminish their appeal. Front and center of such a program must be the removal of the spectre of deportation, which creates fear and mistrust within migrant communities.

A genealogy of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency

Nicholas Rodrigo — Fri, 24 Aug 2018 15:48:48 +0000

America has legislated laws and built institutions for the ejection of undesirables since its inception – this is a country forged through deportation as much as it is by immigration. Immigration and Custom’s Enforcement Agency, referred to by its acronym ICE, is the institution synonymous with the Trump administrations hardening immigration policies. Initially set up to prevent terrorism and transnational crime, ICE has been at the center of a litany of immigration scandals in the post 9/11 era.

A consistent critique of ICE is that not only does it is constantly overstep elements of the constitution, but that its very existence is at odds with “American values”. The reality is that the countries specific approach to immigration legislation has resulted in the emergence and evolution of deportation institutions built and molded by the perspectives of the American electorate

The Plenary power doctrine

In the years following the Civil War Federal policy on immigration became increasingly founded on the plenary power doctrine, which stipulates that the political branches of the legislative and the executive have the sole power to regulate all aspects of immigration, as the basic function of exercising territorial sovereignty. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 which barred the immigration of Chinese laborers to the United States came about through increasing resentment in California to Chinese immigration, and its perceived impact on labor. In a Supreme Court case in which the exclusion of Chae Chan Ping was upheld, the court noted that “the government of the United States, through the action of the legislative department, can exclude aliens from its territory”.Over the course of the next 80 years, the Supreme Court affirmed the plenary power doctrine in a case after case – undergirding this is the idea that keeping immigration within the political branches to ensure a uniform and efficient immigration system accountable to the electorate. These legal developments have been paralleled by an unfurling bureaucracy tasked with managing naturalization and expelling unwanted “aliens”.

Federalization of immigration and naturalization bureaucracy

After the passing of the Immigration Act of 1891, the Office of the Superintendent of federal immigration set up stations up and down the country – the largest on Ellis Island in New York. The Immigration Service began to hire Immigrant Inspectors who had previously worked for state agencies. The Federalized control over immigration continued with increasing congressional intervention into the 20thcentury, resulting in an immigration fund with an annual appropriation in 1909. Naturalization, which since the Naturalization Act of 1802 had been under the control of “any court of record” was brought under the federal control through the Basic Naturalization Act of 1906,followed by the Bureau of Naturalization in 1913.

Anti-immigration sentiment finds a practical outlet

In the first two decades of the twentieth century, over 4.5 million immigrants settled in the US, many entering large industrial cities, swelling the labor market and causing social frictions with existing communities. Xenophobia at this time was a well-established element of American social life, but plenary power allowed the federal government to respond to these sentiments with a draconian immigration policies and more combative institutions. In 1924, congress created the U.S. Border Patrol, within the Immigration Service. Deportation mechanisms began to increase exponentially during the twenties, with the deportation of ideological undesirables as well as labor organizers, many blamed for social ills and disturbing the peace. The increase of plenary power and concentration of exclusion and deportation laws in the hands of the executive was only offset by administrative discretion, which barely papered over the increasingly racist immigration policies. On June 10, 1933 the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) was established through Executive Order 6166,with congress using this agency to channel state resources to the investigation, exclusion and prevention of illegal entries and the deportation of criminal and subversive aliens. Popular understanding of the INS is that it functioned as a law enforcement agency on the countries southwestern border. Dobrah Kang argues that while Congress shaped and guided federal immigration policy, local INS officials often carried out expedited deportation practicesincluding voluntary departure, border patrol roundups and mass removal campaigns like Operation Wetback. Many of these hinged on the agency’s exemption from the Fourth Amendment

9/11 and the emergence of ICE

The September 11, 2001 attacks changed US immigration policy forever. The 9/11 Commission Reportstated that if immigration laws had been strictly enforced, fifteen of the nineteen terrorists would barred from entry – fueling concerns that immigration management is a national security issue. In response, Congress passed the Homeland Security Act in 2002, establishing the Department of Homeland Security and splitting the INS into three agencies: US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and ICE. Congress stepped in to provide financial clout as well appropriating more funds for immigration agencies than had previously been requested. In the 2012 fiscal year the US governmentspent $18 billion on federal immigration enforcement– 24% higher than all other principal federal criminal law enforcement agencies. By 2014, CBP was the largest single law enforcement agency in the country, whilst the ICE budget grew by 87% between 2005 – 2012. Within that time the agency moved more solidly towards immigration enforcement, with around 8,000 ICE agents dedicated to locating, arresting, detaining and removing undocumented migrants.

ICE courts political and financial power to justify and expand its mandate

Like the INS before it, ICE has been circumventing constitutional norms by expanding its work. moving to protect and expand this unprecedented access to the US treasury purse strings through justifying its mandate, but also through courting lobbyists and US capital.

In the 2016 General Election, the National Immigration and Customs Enforcement Council endorsed Donald trumpfor president stating that his policies of providing more powers and an end to Sanctuary Cities. Trump has rewarded their support with a number of executive orders, reinforcing the plenary power discourse over immigration. On January 25 2017 Trump issued Executive Order which would increase the number of immigrants who could be expanded to include 345,000 fugitives with final deportation orders and 600,000 expired visa holders. In a testimony before the homeland security subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, Thomas Homan, acting director of ICE at the time, laid out various reasons why the agency was requesting a $1.2 billion injection of funds. Homan cited the number of detainer requests increasing by 75% between 2016 and 2017 as the reason for the need to 51,000 beds in immigration detention centers. In response, the Senate Subcommittee passed the appropriations bill which would allocate $7.21 billion to ICE, a $134 million year-over increase. In the text of the bill, the Committee reiterates not only its support for ICE bur also its call for “additional personnel and detention beds” for the apprehension and removal of individuals outlined in Trumps January 25 2017 Executive Order. Meanwhile, luxury landlords across New York state collect millions in rent from ICE – landlords who have funded Andrew Cuomo’s political campaigns.

ICE is not aberration, but a logical development of the plenary power doctrine

Immigration reform is a toxic topic in the US political system. Incessant partisan point scoring between the two parties has lead to vacillation by successive administrations over comprehensive reform. Into this political vacuum has stepped a sprawling bureaucracy, buoyed by plenary power and increasing access to state funds and close to symbolic judicial oversight. The concentration of immigration control, and its effect of creating agencies like ICE can be frustrating for progressively minded immigration reform advocates, who see the low levels of judicial oversight a meagre recourse for constitutional standards. However plenary power should not be seen as a brick wall towards a just immigration system, but as a call to roll up our sleeves and get to work in the political arena rather than the courts. The Chinese Exclusion Laws and the national origins quota system ended in 1943 and 1965 respectively, because of congressional repeal by way of decades of advocacy. Real grassroots work against ICE is what is needed, and the plenary power doctrine grants a realm of political opportunities for migrants rights activists. This realm can only be entered into and struggled within through coordinated grassroots agitation from below, which places pressure on the main parties, without engaging in myopic political gains.

NY midterm battles could spark the fire for a progressive immigration reform movement

Nicholas Rodrigo — Fri, 24 Aug 2018 14:39:46 +0000

New York State mid-terms could set the tempo for national immigration reform, but only if progressively minded Democrats are put under pressure from immigrant rights groups - they must keep up the pressure

Nick Rodrigo

The public furore over the Trump administrations zero tolerance immigration policies has been forecasted to be a major factor in the 2018 midterm elections this November. Earlier this year members of both sides of the political aisle left Congress without a stimulus towards their respective immigration related projects.The omnibus spending bill did not include sufficient funds for the much-vaunted border wall, nor did it propose to defund “sanctuary cities” or provide a solution on the Deferred Action for Child Arrivals program – effectively rescinded by Trump last September. Both the GOP and DNC will approach this electoral cycle from different vantage points, but effectively basing their campaigns around their jilted goals on immigration.

The Senate

According to the Center for Immigration Studies, there are eight sanctuary counties in New York. New York State is one of the key 21 legislative battleground chamber in the 2018 elections, with all 63 Senate seats up for election this November. Over the course of April and May, 2018 five Republican incumbents announced that they would not be seeking re-election whilst a number of others turned red in 2016 but by way of low majorities. Since Trump’s electoral upset, the Republican controlled state has displayed differing perspectives on immigration reform. In March of this year, the Republican controlled senate passed bill S3698, with the implicit intention to crack down on cities and counties which have adapted sanctuary polices. The measure would mean that the New York would have to compile a list of local jurisdictions that have policies which interfere with the enforcement of ICE detainer requests – with the threat of funding cuts if these policies are not rescinded. The bill’s sponsor, Senator Thomas Croci, one of the five not seeking re-election, has used the moral panic of MS-13and its questionable relationship to undocumented migration in order to propose the bill. The bill failed to clear the State Assemly, with Assemblyman Kevin Cahill declaring it “dead on arrival”. Kingston Mayor Steve Noble noted that the legislation “includes provisions meant to intimidate local governments and law enforcement agencies”.

House of Representatives and the move to abolish ICE

In late June, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, a 28-year-old Democratic Latina socialist from the Bronx unseated Joe Crowley. Crowley, a 10-term veteran with the full wait of the Democratic Party’s political weight behind him was resound beaten by grassroots campaign which had the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as one of its key campaign pledges. New York Democrats are leading the party on this burgeoning movement, with Mayor Bill de Blasio declaring that “ICE’s time has come and gone”. Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez of New York’s seventh district even further in a statement in June commenting that “while eliminating ICE would be an important step, it is not enough to halt Donald Trump’s deportation machine”. Even mainstream DNC operators like Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York has stated that she does not see ICE “working as intended”. This shift by the leadership is not by way of an internal Damascene moment, but rather from outside agitation from organized immigration rights activists, and the infiltration of their concerns into the party. This has come by way of two-fold process.The first came through the institutions of organized labor shifting their stance on immigration, who saw a reservoir of potential members in the the country’s growing exploitation prone immigrant population. The party then moved to the left on immigration by reacting to public concern towards the punitive nature of immigration detention and deportation – public concern which was lead by more direct action oriented radical migrant rights groups– the spearhead of this movement has been the DREAMERs.

DACA and New York City politics

In 2015 about 50 immigration activists in Manhattanpledged to not eat until the DREAM ACT measure was included in the New York State budget..

Those protected under the Differed Entry for Childhood Arrival Act (DACA) are known as DREAMers, they range in age from 15 – 36 and number around 787,580. The DREAMer movement became a vanguard movement in the immigration debate as far back as 2010, when they successfully pressured the US Senateto bring a bill to legalize their status. Since then they have staged demonstrations, direct actions and lobbied sympathetic politicians up and down the country. In New York City, DREAMers are an indispensable component of the city’s workforce and income. In 2017 DREAMers contributed $4.7 billion in GDP for the city, with the a 69% labor force participation. In February of this year, NY State assembly announced that they will pass a State version of the DREAM Actwhich will help DREAMers access educational opportunities. The Act was left out of Governor Andrew Cuomo’s 2015 budget proposal due to Republican control of the Senate, prompting 10 Dreamer’s to launch a hunger strike and mass demonstrations across colleges in New York City. This state-wide version of the DREAM Act has been a touchstone topic for Cuomo’s popularity in New York City, with many within his own party accusing him of vacuous opportunism when it comes to immigration reform, and even compliance with the current deportation regime. Sen. José Peraltahas commented that Cuomo has an incentive to stick by the Act being included in the budget, in order to build support for a potential 2020 presidential run.

Immigration is likely to be a major factor in the upcoming midterm elections for New York City, and New York State. The Democratic political machine, under particular pressure from grassroots activists, has swung to a far more progressive stance on immigration. From entrenching sanctuary legislation in order to avoid cooperation with federal immigration agencies, to DREAMer based legislation, and even calls for the dismantlement of ICE itself. These changes in New York are not happening in isolation to shifts within the DNC itself, and the broader work of immigrant rights groups across the country. However the party is not yet singing off the same hymn sheet. On July 12 Democrats introduced the “Establishing a Humane Immigration Enforcement System Act”, a bill which would effectively terminate ICE within a year. The bill was brought to the floor by Republicans, a move of political gamesmanship which called the Democrats bluff, forcing them to plan to vote against it. Democrats know that the majority of the electorate are against the abolition of ICE, even if they have viewed Trump’s detention of children as callous. If contradictions between local politicians in the party and the DNC on immigration deepen in the run up to the midterm immigrant rights activists need to ensure the pressure is kept up. This must be done in such a way so that the net beneficiary elements of City and State-wide support for a just and human immigration system is propagated to the rest of the country. Immigrants rights end up reinforcing the benefits and rights of all, if this message is championed then the the Overton window on immigration reform across the country can be channelled towards radical and progressive ends.

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