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.

US immigration and criminal justice policy has been defined by the countries racist foundations. Because of this inescapable reality, Black immigrants often face a double subjugation from the state, disproportionately experiencing the structural violence of racist policing and the growing nexus of crimmigration laws and policies. In this episode we are joined to discuss these issues by Catherine Labiran and Albert Saint Jean of the Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI). BAJI is a racial justice and migrant rights organization which engages in education, advocacy, and cross-cultural alliance-building in order to strengthen a national movement to end racism, criminalization, and economic disenfranchisement in Black immigrant, refugee and African American communities.

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.

Guest: Todd Miller Before a migrant reaches US soil they must contend with the hard US border. Award winning journalist Todd Miller discusses the extension of the US border into the global south, and the increasing securitization and militarization of the US bordering practices since 9/11.

Guest: Professor David Brotherton What is the deportation regime? In our first episode, we will discuss with Professor David Brotherton the history of forced removal in the United States, and the reaction of academia to this phenomenon.

They are just Deportees is an innovative new podcast from the Social Anatomy of a Deportation Regime at John Jay College. Over the course of this podcast series Darializa Avila Chevalier and Nick Rodrigo will be interviewing scholars, journalists and activists researching, reporting on and resisting the structural violence of the US immigration enforcement system.