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A rare look at the brute-force mechanics of deportation in the United States. In December 2017, U.S. immigration authorities shackled and abused 92 African refugees for two days while attempting to deport them by plane to Somalia. When national media broke the story, government officials lied about what happened. Shackled tells the story of this harrowing failed deportation, the resulting class action litigation, and two men's search for safety in the United States over the course of three long years. Through Abdulahi's and Sa'id's firsthand accounts, immigration lawyer Rebecca A. Sharpless brings to life the harsh consequences of the U.S. deportation system and how racism and anti-Blackness operate within it. Sharpless follows the money that ICE funnels into local jails, private contractors, and charter jets, exposing a sprawling system of immigration enforcement that detains and abuses noncitizens at scale. Woven with the wider context of Abdulahi's and Sa'id's stories, this immigration odyssey reveals disturbing truths about Somalia, asylum, and the U.S. court system. Shackled will galvanize readers—attorneys, activists, policymakers, and scholars alike—to call out and dismantle this brutal infrastructure

As African American women left slavery and the plantation economy behind, many entered domestic service in southern cities and towns. Cooking was one of the primary jobs they performed in white employers' homes, feeding generations of white families and, in the process, profoundly shaping southern foodways and culture.

Nativist sentiments against classes of immigrants have existed since colonial times. But views about immigration and immigrants drive U.S. electoral politics now more than ever, accounting for a significant number of voters who crossed party lines in the 2016 presidential election. The COVID-19 pandemic has the potential to harden deeply-held beliefs about outsider threats and further entrench the polarization of public views on immigration. During his campaigns and term in office, President Trump popularized nativism, breaking from the received wisdom of the Republican party. Casting the virus as a foreign invader, he built on fears of the contagion to alter immigration policy in fundamental ways, including shutting down the border and eviscerating asylum protections. Nativism has allowed President Trump and his supporters to harmonize their contradictory beliefs that, on the one hand, anti-virus public health measures do not require strong collective action within the country, but, on the other, they justify extreme restrictions against immigrants. Over the long term, changing demographics and an increasingly positive view of immigrants and immigration signal that the country is on a trajectory to a more open society. In the short term, however, the Biden administration must contend with the surge of nativism stoked by President Trump and exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Immigration law fails to align with the contemporary understanding of substance addiction as a medical condition. The Immigration and Nationality Act regards noncitizens who suffer from drug or alcohol substance use disorder as immoral and undesirable. Addiction is a ground of exclusion and deportation and can prevent the finding of "good moral character" needed for certain immigration applications. Substance use disorder can lead to criminal behavior that lands noncitizens, including lawful permanent residents, in removal proceedings with no defense. The time has come for immigration law to catch up to today's understanding of addiction. The damage done by failing to contemporize the law extends beyond the harms of unwarranted family separation due to the deportation or exclusion of people who suffer from substance use disorder. Holding noncitizens to an archaic standard threatens our civic and political identity as a diverse and democratic country. The bigger the gap between contemporary mores and immigration law and policy, the harder it is for U.S. citizens to develop a civic and political identity that is free of ethnic and racial animus. Double standards for citizens and noncitizens create cognitive dissonance, leaving society vulnerable to discriminatory or stereotypical views to justify the differential treatment. This phenomenon not only harms noncitizens but thwarts the formation of a national civic and political identity free of ethnic and racial bias. This Article proposes and explains the legislative reforms necessary to remedy the current state of immigration law's treatment of people with substance use disorders.

This Article employs the cosmopolitan political theory of Seyla Benhabib as a framework for understanding the U.S. government's shifting decisions about family detention and immigration policy more generally. Although Benhabib is a leading political theorist, few have used her work to analyze particular immigration policies or laws. This Article begins to fill that gap. Benhabib has much to offer scholars and advocates who envision a world of expanded opportunities for immigrants seeking to enter and for those already here. She calls for increasingly porous, but not open, borders, providing a middle-ground between utopian open-border positions and the exclusionary bent of liberal communitarianism. Benhabib's embrace of periodic amnesty for undocumented immigrants, her critique of strong insider/outsider claims and her optimism that liberal democracies are becoming more cosmopolitan supply an architecture for ambitious pro-immigrant politics.

Mainstream pro-immigrant law reformers advocate for better treatment of immigrants by invoking a contrast with people convicted of a crime. This Article details the harms and limitations of a conceptual framework for immigration reform that draws its narrative force from a contrast with people-citizens and noncitizens-who have been convicted of a criminal offense and proposes an alternate approach that better aligns with racial and class critiques of the U.S. criminal justice system. Noncitizens with a criminal record are overwhelmingly low-income people of color. While some have been in the United States for a short period of time, many have resided in the United States for much longer. Many are lawful permanent residents with strong family ties, including U.S. citizen children. Convicted noncitizens who have served significant time in our penal system have experienced the well-documented harms associated with both criminal and civil incarceration. Despite the significant size of this population and its location at the convergence of two heavily criticized law incarceration. Despite the significant size of this population and its location at the convergence of two heavily criticized law enforcement regimes, these individuals rarely serve as an example for what is wrong with our immigration system. To the contrary, convicted noncitizens are typically regarded as foils for more deserving immigrants. Immigration reformers are not the first to employ a deserving/undeserving narrative as a means of obtaining political gains for some at the expense of others. Across all areas of law reform, policy makers and advocates have sought to generate empathy for groups of people by invoking a contrast with others. In drawing a contrast between a favored group and others who are degenerate, deviant, or less deserving, the "politics of respectability" depends on a contrast with an "out" or deviant group. Racial justice proponents, much more than immigration reformers, have made significant headway in moving beyond respectability politics, especially when critiquing hyperincarceration. This Article describes a different conceptualization of immigrants and crime as well as examples of how certain immigration reform groups have sought to implement aspects of this alternate frame.