They Are Just Deportees

Guest: Ramzi Kassem

Ramzi Kassem is Professor of Law at the City University of New York where he is the founding director of the CLEAR project and the co-director of the Immigrant & Non-Citizen Rights Clinic. He joins us to discuss the impact that the so-called war on terror has had on Muslim and other criminalized groups in the United States, expounding upon the expansion of the security state into migrant and other communities of color and on both the potentialities and, importantly, the limits of the law in the pursuit of justice by people on the receiving end of state violence meted out in the name of security.

Guest: Professor Shirley Leyro

What does belonging mean to undocumented students in CUNY? How does the threat of deportation impact the emotional well-being of those students dreaming for a better life through higher education? Professor Shirley Leyro discusses her “CUNY belonging” project and the responsibility of CUNY Professors to these young people.

Guest: Professor Yolanda Ortiz-Rodriguez & Professor Jayne Mooney

Professor Yolanda Ortiz-Rodriguez and Professor Jayne Mooney on the issues facing immigrant women who have survived domestic violence, and the way in which intersectionality and reflexive ethnographic techniques can build connections of solidarity through research.

Guest: Professor Sarah Tosh

“Crimmigration” is a sociolegal concept that refers to the increasing amalgamation of the criminal justice and immigration enforcement systems. Professor Sarah Tosh discusses how this has resulted in a deportation pipeline in the US, streamlining immigrants into removals by way of spurious means.

Guest: Professor Nancy Hiemstra

A carceral logic has gripped the US states approach to poverty and criminality since the neoliberal turn in the 1980s. Professor Nancy Hiemstra examines how this has extended to immigration enforcement in ways that reinforces racial and market fundamentalist logic in turn leading to an explosion of migrant detention centers.