The idea linking immigrants to crime is constructed over legal fictions and political rhetoric. The criminalization of immigrants, however, is a reality sedimented on the most punitive features of the immigration system (e.g., deportation without guaranteed legal representation) and the criminal legal system, a relationship socio-legal scholars refer to as “crimmigration.” Below I share recent works that help us better understand the field of crimmigration in the US context. These readings describe and explain historically the networks of immigration enforcement and their relationship with the criminal legal system, but also offer a contrast with collective efforts to advocate for immigrants’ rights. In other words, these readings frame the reality of crimmigration today, including forms of resistance and community action.
Welcome the Wretched. In Defense of the “Criminal Alien” (2024), by César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández
Theme: A historical and legal argument tracing the past that led to the contemporary fusion of immigration enforcement and the criminal legal system as both ineffective and unjust.
César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández’s work makes the bold argument that zero tolerance policies targeting migrants convicted of a crime are a misguided appeal to a nativist fear that does little to improve public safety. Through historical reflection and legal analysis, García Hernández highlights the hypocrisy of attempting to fix social problems by expelling individuals, instead of addressing the underlying structural issues that lie behind their actions. García Hernández pushes us to consider how and why these standards are disproportionately used against low-income migrants of color and not applied to the histories of crimes like slavery and fraud from governmental officials.
No Justice in the Shadows (2020), by Alina Das
Theme: A historical perspective of deportation policies and their entangled with mass-incarceration over the past thirty years.
Alina Das argues that America’s crime-based deportation machinery has relied on criminalization, mass-incarceration, prosecution, and imprisonment of migrants. The criminal legal system legitimizes the deportation of immigrants by granting them a criminal past, not necessarily a violent past. The book offers a historical perspective on deportation policies over the last thirty years, arguing for a more expansive consideration of the sets of laws that have expanded criminal categories to allow deportation of “expendable” individuals. In doing so, Das questions the legal foundations allowing rampant discrimination against non-white migrants and brings light to the difficult realities for immigrant activists who are often targeted by immigration enforcement. The work helps reveal how the deportation machinery operates in secrecy and ambiguity, with great power to surveil and exclude migrants, but also to corner those supporting them.
The Immigration Law Death Penalty. Aggravated Felonies, Deportation, and Legal Resistance (2023), by Sarah Tosh
Theme: A case study on how ambiguous legal categories contribute to the criminalization and disproportionate deportation of Black and Brown immigrants.
Sarah Tosh’s research focuses on an ambiguous legal category, such as the aggravated felony. It increases the exposure of Black and Brown immigrants to targeted enforcement and deportation regardless of their document status. These type of convictions are not necessarily aggravated or felonious. Instead, the aggravated felonies comprise a wide range of offenses–even misdemeanors– that range from shoplifting to arms trafficking or murder. Ultimately, she outlines how this category has become a mechanism that creates a dichotomy between good and bad immigrants, which in turn segregates access to resources for legal defense. Still, where there is injustice there is resistance, Tosh asserts, using the networks of legal support in New York City to reveal the possibilities and gaps offered by sanctuary provisions.
Bonus: Behind Crimmigration (2023), by Felicia Arriaga
Theme: The relationship between immigration authorities, local governments, and their law-enforcement in border enforcement and deportation.
Felicia Arriaga’s work builds on fieldwork in North Carolina to enrich the discussion on the reliance of immigration authorities, such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), on local law-enforcement and local governments that identify, detain, and deport immigrants. This book offers a detailed narrative on the established partnerships between sheriffs and ICE, aimed at exerting social control over racialized immigrants, particularly Latinos. Arriaga complements this analysis by documenting the networks of survival and resistance that exist through legal defense initiatives and communities, especially relevant in spaces with fewer resources and networks of advocacy with more challenges, compared to big cities (e.g., NYC or Los Angeles) with sanctuary protections.
Dr. Lorena Avila, Villanova University and 2023-24 Fellow, Im/migrant Well-Being Scholar Collaborative