Immigration Article of the Day: Trauma as Inclusion by Raquel Aldana, Patrick Marius Koga, Thomas O'Donnell, Alea Skwara, & Caroline Perris

Trauma as Inclusion  by Raquel Aldana, Patrick Marius Koga, Thomas O'Donnell, Alea Skwara, & Caroline Perris, Summer 2022 (89:4) Tennessee Law Review

Abstract

This article brings together a historian and law, public health, psychiatry, psychology, and neuroscience faculty and researchers to document how trauma is understood across disciplines and how it has developed in U.S. immigration law largely to exclude but increasingly to include migrants whose lives have been uprooted or otherwise impacted by borders. Our aim is to document and assess the progress and the gaps in immigration law’s embrace and understanding of trauma through metrics that include the science of trauma, compassion, and fairness. This analysis is made urgent by the travesty we are witnessing of children ripped apart from their parents and borders completely shut to desperate migrants seeking our protection.

KJ