By Kim Langona On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization officially declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. Two days later, President Trump declared a national emergency over the COVID-19 outbreak. To date, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has reported 7,600 deaths and more than 300,000 cases in the United States alone. Immigration officials are already empowered to let people shelter in private residences as public health officials advise. According to section 212(d)(5)(A) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, the Department of Homeland Security has the power [...]
Close Immigration Prisons Now
Yesterday, I published an op-ed in The New York Times arguing for the urgent need to shut down immigration prisons in the United States. I wrote this with my brother Carlos Moctezuma García, a partner at García & García Attorneys at Law, PLLC. You can read the opinion piece, Close Immigration Prisons Now, on the Times' website. [...]
TEDx Talk: Immigration prison isn’t the answer
Liberty is too precious for anyone to lose it because politicians want votes and private corporations want money. That's what I told the 5,000 people who heard my TEDx talk in Denver last November. Now you can watch too. My talk builds on Migrating to Prison: America's Obsession with Locking Up Immigrants. Since the book's release in December, I've been talking to audiences around the United States about the United States' use of immigration prisons--why we use them and why we shouldn't. Check out where I'll be visiting in the coming weeks. And if you haven't already, I hope you'll pick [...]
Op-ed in New York Times & book excerpt
On the week that Migrating to Prison: America's Obsession with Locking Up Immigrants is officially released, get a preview of the major arguments I raise in an op-ed published in The New York Times. The piece appears online today and in the print edition on December 3. If you're interested in more, you can read an excerpt from the book in Borderless Magazine. Let's not stop there. I would love to talk about the birth, growth, and potential end of immigration prisons in person. Later this week, I'll be speaking about the book in Denver, then I head to Seattle next week. More stops are on [...]
Todd Miller at Denver Law
Another year of the Crimmigration Law & Policy Event Series at the University of Denver begins today. At noon, writer Todd Miller will speak about his latest book, Empire of Borders: The Expansion of the U.S. Border Around the World. Released in August, Empire of Borders turns the tables on migration rhetoric. Instead of focusing on the people who cross borders, Miller canvasses how border policing crosses borders. The event is sponsored by the DU Latin America Center and the Estlow Center of the Department of Media, Film & Journalism. [...]
ICE family prison population shows slight upward tick
Despite President Trump’s virulent anti-migrant rhetoric and his administration’s heavy-handed approach to immigration law enforcement, immigration officials held only slightly more parents and children in its families-only facilities under his tenure as under his predecessor, President Obama. Government statistics I obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request show remarkable consistency in the number of people locked up in family immigration prisons from October 1, 2016 to September 24, 2018. In the two years covered in the released data, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement [...]
Expedited suffering
When it comes to President Trump’s attacks on migrants, his administration’s latest policies prove that there are no limits. What started with a Trump Tower claim in June 2015 that Mexican rapists were streaming across the border has morphed into a wholesale attack on people fleeing for their lives. At every step, the administration has turned to imprisonment as its favored means of punishing migrants who are already here and convincing others to stay away. Immigration and Customs Enforcement already holds more people in its facilities than ever before. Its cousin agency within the U.S. [...]
In 2018, ICE detention population reached another all-time daily high
Under President Trump, ICE has seared itself into the public consciousness for its sweeping attitude toward migrants. Perhaps nothing better illustrates the administration’s hardline approach than the growing size of its detention population. Official statistics I obtained through a FOIA request reveal that, on average, 42,188 people were detained by ICE during the 2018 fiscal year, breaking the government’s previous high set one year earlier. Known as the average daily population (ADP), ICE’s daily running tally shifts remarkably from month to month. In June 2018, for example, the agency [...]
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