Humanizing ImmigrationHumanizing Immigration

"Throughout United States history, immigration has been a divisive and often controversial topic. During the 2016 presidential election and subsequent Trump administration, anti-immigrant sentiments were again unearthed and became normalized in politics, stoking the flames of xenophobia and toxic nationalism. In Humanizing Immigration, Bill Ong Hing draws on his fifty years of litigation and community experience and argues that ICE should be abolished because racism is embedded both in the history of our immigration laws and in our current enforcement policies. He traces the prison-to-deportation pipeline funneling Black and Latinx noncitizens from the criminal court system into ICE custody, underscoring that because immigrants of color tend to experience racism and violence from the criminal justice system, they're also more vulnerable to ICE enforcement. Having represented noncitizens from all over the world facing deportation, Hing has witnessed the traumatic and often racially charged experiences of those caught up in what he calls the ICE 'meat grinder,' and he argues that migrants should have the right to free movement across borders and the right to live free of harassment over immigration status. Including histories of Latin, Asian, and African migration, and citing specific courtroom cases and examples of racist immigration law, Hing makes the case for abandoning current immigration policies in favor of a more just and humane system. Hing argues that maintaining family unity must be a goal; that immigration judges should be encouraged and authorized to take a humanitarian approach to their cases; that asylum applicants should be given the benefit of the doubt; and that instead of detaining migrant children and fostering institutionalized abuse, we need alternatives that allow children to live freely in a community setting while waiting for their immigration status to be resolved. Providing concrete objectives for reform and tactics for disrupting the current system, Humanizing Immigration compels readers to take a hard look at the US immigration system and reimagine it as a racially just, radically sympathetic institution."--Jacket.