ImmigrationProf Blog

New Research from the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute

UCLA's Latino Policy and Politics Institute has released a new study on the health and social consequences of President Trump’s executive order to end birthright citizenship, Born into Uncertainty.

The authors of the report are Dr. Lucía Félix Beltrán, Rosario Majano, Ahmad Ismail, Jie Zong, Dr. Silvia R. González, and Dr. Arturo Vargas Bustamante.

Highlights of the study's findings include that ending birthright citizenship would:

• discourage families from using essential services, worsening health outcomes.
• worsen barriers to prenatal care, driving up costs and harming infant health.
• disproportionately affect Latino children.
• harm immigrants, a group that contributes more to the U.S. health system than they receive in healthcare services.

A full copy of the report is available here.

IE

Wide disparities in estimates of Venezuelan TPS holders--Explained!

There are wide disparities in the reported estimates of Venezuelan TPS holders. News outlets have been citing the Trump administration's estimate that 350,000 Venezuelans have TPS and will be affected by Secretary Noem's recent termination of the program. Meanwhile MPI estimates that there are 607,000 Venezuelans with TPS (and an additional 117,000 who entered the US on the now-terminated CHNV program).

What explains the disparity?

Well, there are TWO different Venezuelan TPS programs: a 2021 program and a 2023 program. The latter (2023) is the one that DHS Secretary Mayorkas sought to extend prior to leaving office and that now DHS Secretary Noem announced that she would end. The former (2021) is simply being allowed to end when it ends.

How does this shake out?

Some 350,000 Venezuelans who have TPS under the 2023 program will lose their status on April 2, 2025.

The remaining 250,000-ish Venezuelans who have TPS under the 2021 program will lose their status on September 10, 2025. 

-KitJ

Podcast on the History of Birthright Citizenship

 

Looking for a podcast on topical immigration news.  Birthright citizenship is in the news.  And here is a history podcast for you on the topic.  🎧 In August of 1895, a ship called the SS Coptic approached the coast of Northern California. On that boat was a passenger from San Francisco named Wong Kim Ark. He was returning home after visiting his wife and child in China. The customs agent barred him from getting off the ship under the Chinese Exclusion Act, which denied citizenship to Chinese immigrants. Though Wong Kim Ark had been born in the U.S. and lived his whole life there, the agent said he was not a U.S.  citizen.

KJ

The Return of Trump and Immigration

President-elect Donald Trump has promised to “close the border” on his first day in office. “The president and his legal team have four years to appoint new federal judges to change not only the operational landscape—more prosecution, detention, and deportation—but also the legal landscape of immigration enforcement,” writes John Washington in his November 10, 2024, essay for the NYR Online. “Humanitarian visas could disappear. Asylum protections will likely be further gutted, and more families intentionally separated. States may even be able to run their own immigration enforcement or deputize their own border forces.” 

For an interview with Washington, click here.  I found one passage especially worth noting:

"How has American public opinion on undocumented immigration—and the subject of immigration more generally—changed since you began reporting?

It’s become less nuanced and more hateful. Not that there was much nuance or sympathy before. Immigration was always a divisive issue, especially during political campaigns. But this year’s presidential race was unprecedented. We all remember how Trump and his supporters heaped vitriol onto migrant communities. But Kamala Harris, too, made much of her background as a prosecutor in a border state and her record of targeting transnational criminal organizations. Her approach to immigration policy was generally aggressive: she praised the Biden administration for raising the asylum threshold and cracking down on border crossings, and hardly mentioned expanding the pathway to citizenship for the millions of undocumented people living in the US. Despite the near-constant bickering about the border, there was practically no discussion of the humanity or dignity of migrants." (bold added).

KJ

Trump’s Immigration Agenda: A Closer Look, by Ahilan Arulanantham

Calling attention to this piece by Ahilan Arulanantham, published this summer in Just Security on Trump's immigration agenda. It contains an excellent analysis and review of the Trump campaign's various stated objectives and responses by immigration advocates. As Arulanantham writes:

"Some highlights include: ending the protection from deportation that several million people have had for years through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Temporary Protected Status (TPS) programs; a mass detention and deportation campaign targeting every undocumented person in the country (of which there are approximately 11 million) explicitly modeled on a program from the 1950s that was known, literally, as “Operation Wetback“; using the “Alien Enemy Act” to jail and deport with virtually no due process people the government would label as gang members; an expanded version of the Muslim Ban (similar to the original version, but now extended to several more Muslim-majority countries, along with separate bans for people supportive of Palestinian rights); ordering federal agencies to stop recognizing birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants; and ending all asylum processing at the border using public health as a justification (as was done during the pandemic under Title 42, but this time for far less serious diseases)."

IE

New UNHCR Report: On the Frontlines of Climate Change, Conflict and Forced Displacement

A new UNHCR report is officially released today, in collaboration with 13 expert organizations, research institutions and refugee-led groups, documents how climate change is forcing displacement around the globe. You may access the report here. Here is more on the release:

"According to the report – No Escape: On the Frontlines of Climate Change, Conflict and Forced Displacement – by 2040 the number of countries facing extreme climate-related hazards is expected to rise from 3 to 65, the vast majority of which host displaced people. Similarly, most refugee settlements and camps are projected to experience twice as many days of dangerous heat by 2050.

For example, the devastating conflict in Sudan has forced millions of people to flee, including 700,000 who have crossed into Chad, which has hosted refugees for decades and yet is one of the countries most exposed to climate change. At the same time, many who fled the fighting but remained in Sudan are at risk of further displacement because of severe flooding that has blighted the country.

Similarly, 72 per cent of Myanmar’s refugees have sought safety in Bangladesh, where natural hazards such as cyclones and flooding, are classified as extreme.

The report also highlights that climate financing is failing to reach refugees, host communities and others in fragile and war-torn countries, so their ability to adapt to the effects of climate change is fast deteriorating.

At present, extremely fragile states receive only around US$ 2 per person in annual adaptation funding, an astounding shortfall when compared to $161 per person in non-fragile states. When investment does reach fragile states, more than 90 per cent goes towards capital cities, while other places rarely benefit."

IE

Most federal "crimes" committed by noncitizens are "immigration crimes"

Hot(ish) off the presses. The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) has released a report on Noncitizens in the U.S.: Public Information on Federal Incarcerations (Sept. 3, 2024). Hat tip to immprof César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández for pointing the publication out on his Instagram feed.

Page 7 is a real eye opener. The GAO reports: "For approximately three-quarters of noncitizens sentenced for a federal crime from fiscal year 2018 through fiscal year 2023, the most serious offense they were convicted of—referred to throughout as “offense type”—was immigration- related (76 percent) (see table 1). Each year, between 73 percent and 81 percent of these noncitizens were sentenced for immigration-related crimes, the vast majority for unlawfully entering or remaining in the U.S."

Here is Table 1:

Thus, the most serious "crime" committed by 75% of federal noncitizen offenders is the "crime" of entering the United States itself. 

-KitJ

Chronicling 25 Years of Violations: ICE Detention at Plymouth County Correctional Facility

Chronicling 25 Years of Violations: ICE Detention at Plymouth County Correctional Facility is a new report authored by Boston University School of Law’s Immigrants’ Rights and Human Trafficking Program (“IRHTP”) and Prisoners’ Legal Services of Massachusetts (“PLS”). BU immprof Sarah Sherman-Stokes led the IRHTP team.

Here is the executive summary of the report:

Consistent complaints over the last twenty-five years reveal a disturbing pattern of systemic abuse and mistreatment of ICE detainees at Plymouth County Correctional Facility. Limited oversight and accountability mechanisms have enabled Plymouth to continue to receive federal funding while simultaneously violating the rights of individuals detained in ICE custody.

Today, individuals detained in ICE custody at Plymouth continue to face unsafe conditions, racism and retaliation from staff, inadequate food, medical care, dental and mental health care, and restricted access to legal counsel and loved ones.

Despite over two decades of documented violations at Plymouth, ICE and Plymouth have continued to renew their contract. The most recent ICE contract renewal expanded Plymouth’s immigrant detention capacity by 35%, alarming advocates and individuals who have directly experienced Plymouth’s decades-long deficiencies. Plymouth is now the only remaining jail in Massachusetts to detain noncitizens in ICE custody and has capacity to detain 402 individuals.

For the first time, this report provides a detailed summary of twenty-five-years of documented violations at Plymouth. Drawing on over two decades of formal and informal investigations and inquiries, reviews by outside agencies and documented internal grievances, this report reveals an alarming disregard for the safety and wellbeing of those detained at Plymouth.

This report adds to that history the voices and experiences of more than sixty men detained by ICE at Plymouth. These interviews confirm that the aforementioned issues persist; civil rights violations at Plymouth are a feature, not a bug. Despite decades of complaints, reports and investigations, the abuses faced by ICE detainees at Plymouth are pervasive and intractable.

We anticipate that ICE and Plymouth will renegotiate their contract at the end of September 2024. In light of these unrelenting violations, this report makes several key recommendations in advance of this contract renegotiation. Full recommendations can be found starting on page 71.

I'm actually in the middle of teaching the detention component of my crimmigration course. I will absolutely be bringing this report into class tomorrow for discussion.

Meanwhile, here's a local news report about this project.

-KitJ

Immigrants are Becoming US Citizens at Fastest Clip in Years

The NY Times reports that immigrants are becoming US citizens at fastest clip in years. Government data shows average wait times under five months, which is on a par with 2013 and 2014 and half the time taken in fiscal 2021. In total, 3.3 million immigrants have become citizens in the current administration.

As the article explains, the increased numbers and heightened pace results from a concerted push in the USCIS. In particular, policies to promote naturalization included:

• An executive order that called for action to “substantially reduce current naturalization processing times” with the goal of strengthening integration of new Americans
• New technology and additional staff in 2022 to reduce the pending caseload of citizenship applications, which had ballooned because of heightened scrutiny by the Trump administration and protracted pandemic-related delays in conducting the swearing-in ceremonies.
• Streamlined naturalization forms, with shorter naturalization applications (14 pages, down from 20) and easier waivers for low-income people to qualify for a discount on the fees ($710, up from $640 to compensate for fiscal impacts of the improvements).

While the electoral consequences of the enlarged voter-eligible population is unclear -- many live in "safe" districts, not all immigrants vote the same way -- it is noteworthy as a signal of rising civic engagement and could transform policy to be more responsive to the will of the people. 

MHC

1 million Mexican Americans were deported a century ago. A new L.A. audio tour explores this 'hidden' history

 

For years, I had been visiting Olvera Street in downtown Los Angeles for many years before I learned of the Mexican "repatriation" and mass removals of Mexican ancestry who were arrested near Olvera Street.  Although largely forgotten, the repatriation every so often makes the news. 

Today, I ran across this story in the Los Angeles Times:

"Olvera Street . . . did not always look as vibrant as it does today. While the historic pedestrian street and El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument attract about 2 million tourists annually, many don’t know how the area came to be or that it was the site of the first public immigration raid in Los Angeles.

A new self-guided audio tour, presented by the California Migration Museum, explores both the origin of this storied area and the “hidden” history of the La Placita raid that ultimately led to the deportation of as many as 1.8 million Mexican Americans across the country in the 1930s."

KJ

Empirical Studies on Migrants and Crime

Trump's speech last week, accepting the RNC's nomination, was riddled with assertions that the country's "illegal immigration crisis" has "spread... crime."

Empirical studies on migrants and crime tell a different story. The following paragraphs are adapted from section 1.2 of my new crimmigration casebook wherein I address the myth of noncitizen criminality:

***

Alex Nowrasteh, the vice president for economic and social policy studies of the libertarian thinktank the CATO Institute, published a study in 2018 based on data from the Texas Department of Public Safety. Nowrasteh found that “For all criminal convictions in Texas in 2015, illegal immigrants had a criminal conviction rate 50 percent below that of native-born Americans. Legal immigrants had a criminal conviction rate 66 percent below that of native-born Americans.” See Criminal Immigrants in Texas: Illegal Immigrant Conviction and Arrest Rates for Homicide, Sex Crimes, Larceny, and Other Crimes (2018). https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/irpb-4-updated.pdf.

Sociologists Michael T. Light and Ty Miller published a broader, longitudinal study of immigration and crime in 2018. Light and Miller combined “newly developed estimates of the unauthorized population with multiple data sources to capture the criminal, socioeconomic, and demographic context of all 50 states and Washington, DC, from 1990 to 2014.” They found that “Increases in the undocumented immigrant population within states are associated with significant decreases in the prevalence of violence.” See Michael T. Light & Ty Miller, Does Undocumented Immigration Increase Violent Crime, 56 Criminology 370 (2018), https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30464356/.

Criminologists Charis Kubrin and Graham Ousey published a book on noncitizen criminality in 2023 titled Immigration and Crime: Taking Stock. Looking at numerous studies, they found either no connection between immigration and crime or a “negative association” between immigrants and crime. In other words, they found that more immigration corresponds with less crime. As the authors told CNN, crimes committed by noncitizens that become “high profile incidents” and the focus of media and politicians are “not the norm. They’re the outlier.” 

Finally, Stanford economist Ran Abramitzky took a different approach to examining noncitizen criminality in his 2023 study with co-authors Leah Platt Boustan, Elisa Jácome, Santiago Pérez, and Juan David Torres. They looked at incarceration data from 1870 to 2020 and found that “immigrants have had lower incarceration rates than the US-born for 150 years.” They also found that immigrants today are 60% less likely to be incarcerated than US-born individuals. See Law-Abiding Immigrants: The Incarceration Gap Between Immigrants and the US-born, 1870-2020 (2023), https://www.cato.org/research-briefs-economic-policy/law-abiding-immigrants-incarceration-gap-between-immigrants-us-born.

***

Just a few cites to bring to the table for when you're next debating the issue of noncitizen criminality.

-KitJ

TRAC Publishes New Data on Immigration Prosecutions in Federal Court

Latest announcement from TRAC here: "Immigration Prosecutions Increase With New Push for Border Enforcement"

Criminal prosecution of immigration crimes has grown since the start of the Biden administration. Figures for the latest available three months covering February-April 2024 show a pronounced jump up 21 percent over the comparable period a year ago. While case-by-case records reflect month-to-month fluctuations, the overall rise from three years ago after Biden assumed office show prosecution levels are now up by 65 percent. These increases may continue given the Department of Justice’s announcement in May 2024 to step up efforts to prosecute human trafficking and immigration-related crimes along the U.S.-Mexico border.

However, the policy of immediately expelling immigrants under Title 42 which started under the Trump administration and had continued under Biden until their lifting in May of last year had brought immigration prosecution levels to historic lows. Prosecutions for illegal entry had virtually disappeared. At one time, illegal entry was the most frequently prosecuted immigration offense. Indeed, a high of over 12,000 monthly unlawful entry prosecutions occurred during the Trump-era “Zero Tolerance Policy” (see TRAC’s previous report here). Not surprisingly these misdemeanor filings now after the end of Title 42 have posted the largest relative gains.

Increases have also occurred for criminal prosecution of illegal reentry – up 57 percent between the first and latest three month period of the Biden presidency. These offenses have consistently made up the largest share, and now account for about two-thirds of all immigration criminal prosecutions. New prosecutions for unlawful reentry reached their highest levels in April 2024. The Western District of Texas drove the largest portion of the recent jump in these misdemeanor filings, followed by Arizona. The other three districts—the Southern District of Texas, the District of New Mexico, and the Southern District of California—have remained relatively low.

Harboring prosecutions ramped up at the beginning of 2021 but have remained on average relatively steady more recently (consistent with longer historical patterns), typically between 300 and 600 per month. Harboring has been used broadly to prosecute not only people who provide physical shelter to immigrants, but also people who provide other forms of aid or assist in evading law enforcement.

https://trac.syr.edu/reports/745/

New Report: “No Human Being Should Be Held Here”: The Mistreatment of LGBTQ and HIV-Positive People in Federal Immigration Jails

Important new report published this month by Immigration Equality, the NIJC, and Human Rights First: “No Human Being Should Be Held Here”: The Mistreatment of LGBTQ and HIV-Positive People in Federal Immigration Jails.

Based on interviews with people held in ICE and CBP custody who identified as LGBTQ and HIV-positive, researchers found:

• One third reported sexual abuse, physical assaults or sexual harassment;
• A majority received inadequate medical care or were denied care altogether, including the majority of individuals living with HIV;
• About half reported new or increased mental health symptoms while in detention;
• Nearly all reported verbal abuse or threats of violence and assault that were homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, or racist;
• Many struggled to access counsel.

IE

New Report by UCLA's Immigrants' Rights Policy Clinic

UCLA Law's Immigrants' Rights Policy Clinic has issued a new report: Cruel Indifference: Family Separation at the U.S.-Mexico Border Before and After Zero Tolerance.

The report addresses the common misconceptions that family separation started under the Trump administration and ended under President Biden.

The report follows on the heels of Biden’s newly-announced executive actions that promise to keep some families already in the United States together, while doubling down on policies that tear families apart at the border. 

IE

New Publication: A Guide to Obtaining Release from Immigration Detention

Don't miss the National Immigration Project's new resource,  A Guide to Obtaining Release from Immigration Detention.

The Guide provides detailed coverage of the range of legal and procedural issues that arise in bond proceedings in U.S. immigration courts, including:

• legal authorities governing immigration detention
• strategies for seeking release
• bond hearing procedures
• how to prepare for a bond hearing
• appellate issues

The Guide was first published in 2018 by Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC) before being updated by the National Immigration Project this year.

IE

 

New Research on EU Migration Featured in The Conversation

Natalia Letki, Dawid Walentek, Peter Thisted Dinesen, and Ulf Liebe have published an essay in the Conversation highlighting their recent research on EU Migration, "We polled EU citizens on what they want asylum policy to look like – their answers may surprise you."

Their research finds that citizens in the EU "are not as polarized" on the migration issue as their governments. Instead, "[a]cross member states, people have remarkably similar preferences, including being strongly in favor of asylum seekers being allowed to work."

They also find that in the countries with the highest rates of new asylum applicants--such as Germany and Spain--citizens express an interest in being "able to relocate new applicants to less burdened countries."

Those interested in learning more can read the full article, published in West European Politics.

IE

Fewer of Canada's Recent Immigrants Are Over-educated For Their Jobs

Here's an interesting statistic reported by the Toronto Star: The latest Canadian census revealed that just 26.7% of the country's recent immigrants were over-educated for their jobs in 2021, a reduction from the 31.1% of recent immigrants reported to be over-educated for their jobs according to the 2016 census. Over-education was defined by researchers as the employment of an individual with a bachelor’s degree in a position requiring only a high school education. As for the figure, 26.7%, it is not only lower than the 2016 figure, it is the lowest reported percentage in some 20 years.

The paper's reporting draws from this in-depth analysis by Statistics Canada.

-KitJ

Report: Raiding the Genome: How the United States Government Is Abusing Its Immigration Powers to Amass DNA for Future Policing

Sponk, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Today, the Georgetown Law Center on Privacy and Technology published a new (108 page!) report entitled Raiding the Genome: How the United States Government Is Abusing Its Immigration Powers to Amass DNA for Future Policing. Here are the one-sentence versions of their seven key takeaways:

1. Since 2020, DHS has added more than 1.5 million DNA profiles to a national law enforcement database.
2. DHS misleads and intimidates people to get them to submit to DNA collection.
3. DHS is collecting DNA primarily from people of color, creating new risks for already overpoliced communities.
4. This massive expansion of federal DNA-collecting power is the result of several low-profile administrative sleights of hand.
5. The government is exploiting its immigration powers to collect genetic material for policing at a pace that would not be possible using criminal policing powers.
6. DHS’s DNA collection program violates the Fourth Amendment.
7. Indefinite government retention of DNA samples poses major risks to individual rights and democratic self governance, given rapidly advancing technology and political instability in the U.S.

I am making my way through the full report. Looks like some excellent new material to include in my fall crimmigration course.

-KitJ

Policy Brief: Expanding the possibilities of working holidays

Caitlin Katsiaficas & Justyna Segeš Frelak have just published a policy brief entitled Expanding the possibilities of working holidays.

Here's the introduction:

Working holiday programmes and other youth mobility schemes offer a chance to live, work, travel, potentially train or study the local language, and more generally acquire experience in another country. Many working holiday programmes emphasise cultural exchange and tourism as their raison d’être, offering a chance for youth to gain international experience with the possibility of working to help finance their stay and travel. Other youth mobility schemes have a different focus, such as education or employability. Targeted at young people, these schemes can offer a range of benefits to participants, employers, destination countries, and origin countries alike. However, while EU Member States have initiatives in place to support such schemes, particularly work and travel, these remain limited in scope and scale. By contrast, programmes in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States are far larger in terms of participating countries, participating youth, and concurrently impact. Against this backdrop, this paper explores the potential benefits of strategically expanding mobility opportunities for third-country national youth to the EU and maps different options for making this possible. It additionally presents the potential trade- offs when it comes to programme goals and design and highlights key considerations for those looking to develop and launch new youth mobility schemes.

It comes with infographics. I love a good infographic.

-KitJ

New TRAC Report: Two-Thirds of Court Asylum Applicants Over Past Decade Found Legally Entitled to Remain

A new report published by TRAC today finds that over the past decade, 66% of all immigrants in removal proceedings who filed asylum applications were entitled to remain in the United States. This includes people who were granted asylum, but also others whose cases were closed in other ways.

The report finds: The latest Immigrant Court records show that over the past decade (FY 2014 to April 2024) Immigration Judges have adjudicated just over one million removal cases in which the immigrant filed an asylum application. Out of these 1,047,134 cases, Judges determined that 685,956 immigrants were legally entitled to remain in the United States because they merited asylum or another form of relief from deportation. Another 332,552 immigrants were ordered removed, and an additional 28,626 immigrants were issued voluntary departure orders. Thus, in total, only about a third (34%) of immigrants in removal proceedings who filed asylum applications were ordered deported while two-thirds (66%) were allowed to remain in the country."

See the latest report here: https://trac.syr.edu/reports/742/