audience and welcome to our panelists for today's

presentation by Elizabeth Cohen. On her new book, I think it's her fourth book, I have that right? illegal, how America's lawless immigration regime threatened threatens us all. Elizabeth comes here as a professor of political science from Syracuse University, she'll speak briefly about the book. And then

we'll have Maggie Peters from UCLA as our discussant, to give some comments on it, and that that point will then open it up to the audience for questions. So at any point, you have questions, you can put them in the chat, or you can hold them and use the q&a function hand raising function for the discussion that follows.

And did I forget anything?

We want to have, Alright, so we're really happy to have you here with us from across the country. Thanks, Liz. Take it away.

Thank you so much, Marjorie. And I want to thank Roger and Maggie, and Warren and Sophia, everybody for creating the space and for the invitation. I think I also Claire data, a debt of gratitude, I'm super happy to be here, we were just discussing that it's really amazing to be able to do this during the semester. And

so I really appreciate the chance to talk about some recent public scholarship of mine. And I would like to preface this by saying I'm a political theorist. I'm interested in immigration, but mostly I write about citizenship. And right, and also about waiting periods and time from a rather abstract perspective. So this is somewhat of a second vein of research for me, but I did it because I thought we really needed to be using our platforms such as they are to do to perform public engagement and really to try and move the needle on immigrant rights and immigration related

issues. And so some of what's in the book is, is kind of startling and new to a lot of people, I suspect in our audience today. There will also be things that I say in the book, and that I say today that you already know. And I you know, we can focus on kind of the more technical things since this is a research group. Or we can focus on the bigger picture, I'm happy to take it in any direction.

I also want to start by saying like the the story that I tell in the book is really not a story about Donald Trump's presidency or legacy. It is a story about the first part of the 20th century. And it is really a story about Bill Clinton and george bush number rock obama, and now Joe Biden.

And it's our story. These are things that many of us have been party to and and happened under our watch. And, you know, if we don't like this story, it's only we can rewrite this ending.

But Donald Trump did not get us into the position, we're in all he was given almost every opportunity that he took, and very little, I think has changed for foreign born persons in the US or trying to get into the US during the first month of this comforter in chief presidency, right. So children are still being de facto separated from family at the border. I think we learned today that around 2000 children who were turned away with family, by the beiden Customs and Border Protection have returned to the US on a company in order to try and enter or in order to enter refugees are still waiting for clearance and camps, private companies are still putting heads in beds and immigration prisons. And the government is still trying to exert eminent domain authority to take away property from landowners like lots and lots of things that were really made possible by Bill Clinton, George Bush, Barack Obama,

aren't really even right now in discussion or in negotiation. So, you know, this is where we are. And it's in many ways where we've been for a while. So I want to start to substance here with some general facts about where things stand in the us today. And then I want to just take a step back do a little bit of history to talk about how we got here, and then I do in the book suggests a way forward. And and that part

I'll end with so you know, some basic facts. The undocumented population in the US stopped growing in around 2007. It's declined since then probably around 13%. And

and a number of people arrested for entering the country without a valid visa or infection. I USBs agent I mean, as opposed to overstaying your visa is as low as it's been since the 1970s. All of this was true before Trump started any of his border build up

data from Pew Hispanic center for Migration studies, Mexican migration project and DHS, excuse me, DHS itself all show this downward trend in undocumented immigration declined started around 2000. it picked up momentum probably started around 2000 picked up momentum in 2008. And we've seen mostly plateaus or drops since then.

And, you know, this trend developed probably right around the time

that we also saw a lot of undocumented immigrants leaving the country. Even if we account for reason, spikes in asylums, again, we just really are in a very different era than we were in the 1990s, when we started to do put into place the infrastructure for the build up of enforcement. Despite the decline, we've seen, basically, an ever escalating massive enforcement arms race, it started in the early 2000s. Right now, our budget for interior enforcement.

And that's only one of the three budgets that exist for immigration related stuff in the US 10 times larger than the budget for the entire inf budget, all three of those functions. Back in 1993. They're taking money from coast guard from the army from other security agencies. So it's really, really consuming a lot of resources.

As almost everybody here i'm sure knows there are three main agencies that addressed immigration related issues in the US. So we have Customs and Border Protection, CBP, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. And then USC is United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. I think probably if we're all in the places where I am and where the talk is taking place or near there. In fact, I would be willing to bet almost everybody attending this webinar is in the CVT, 100 mile zone

100 miles in from the perimeter, the entire perimeter of the United States. So

we were just discussing that we actually see Customs and Border Protection a lot in Syracuse, New York, they look for people who are undocumented, particularly people who may be working in the dairy industry around here, but there's lots of undocumented people who might have reason to need to travel through or to work from queues. I just placing in the interior dealing with a lot of the detention and deportation and then us cis, does whatever welcome mat provisions we have, and there are very few right now.

Under new agencies. Again, as you probably know, none of them existed before 2002 when DHS, the Department of Homeland Security was created, allowed we just had one agency that had been around since 1932. That was ins Customs and Border Protection is the country's largest federal law enforcement agency. It's actually huge. It's much larger than the FBI, the DEA, all the other federal law enforcement agencies.

It's not really a well run agency in 2014, the head of Internal Affairs, a Customs and Border Protection actually blew the whistle on agency, saying that hiring surges and Border Patrol after September 11 had led to probably 1000s and 1000s of agents who were unfit to be carrying weapons and a badge. This is a long standing problem with Border Patrol work. In fact, it goes all the way back to the origins of border patrol itself. But now, which is when we have to worry about this. We know Customs and Border Protection agents are five times more likely than any other law enforcement agents to have been arrested or to be arrested and they have been found to be torturing people, stalking people. We've had a serial killer and CBP

illegally collaborating with armed citizen militias to think that they are, you know, they're cosplaying, essentially, but with real weapons, in some cases to try and intimidate. And in some cases, assault, people that they have decided are undocumented immigrants.

aces also enormous, big and bad. As I sometimes say, in some some of the same ways, some different ways. We're just holding in detention vast number of people, there's been a dip,

mostly due to the pandemic. But it's hard to say that ice itself has really changed or that you know, the contracts they have with private detention companies are going to change

between 2010 and 2016. So it's all pre Trump era.

I officials indicated to investigative journalists that they'd received 33,000 complaints of physical and sexual abuse and their facilities, including numerous cases in which people died in ice custody and you have to do a lot of foil work in some cases to find out what ice is doing. So it may in fact, be the case that more people are dying in knife cuts.

Than we know, a good deal of the approximately 18 billion we're spending on enforcement every year ends up in the hands of executives who run the private detention and monitoring facilities that AI relies heavily upon. Biden has committed to ending private detention facilities for federal prison inmates, but is is really like a bigger part of those arrangements. And as far as we know, that's not ending anytime soon. I also like to draw attention to the fact that the companies that run these facilities, particularly core civic, also sells to people who have to wear electric monitoring equipment, that equipment. And I started writing this book, I really did not realize how dangerous that electronic monitoring can be. But in fact, it malfunctions and then incorrect information about people who have to pay for it again themselves on a pretty regular basis. So not only are these companies making money from it, but in many cases, it's not even really achieving what it's supposed to achieve. It also is an invasion of really gross invasion of privacy in ways that affect people who are wearing it. But then also a lot of people around them as well, in 2017, things that so bad that a group of employees in the sub agency that does Homeland Security Investigations, so really like the basic, the basis for the creation of gave us is now a tiny sub agency within a Homeland Security Investigations wrote to Kirsten Nielsen, and actually asked to separate from ice because they felt so strongly that being a part of it was making it like damaging their reputations and making it impossible for them to do their job.

Um, I think it's, it's super important to remember that this is something that affects not just to non citizens, but also US citizens as well. And we got to report a complaint yesterday, I assume, people may have heard about, but that like basically a complaint saying please stop deporting very young us, born US citizen children without their documentation. So people are

very young children. In many cases, babies are being deported with non citizen parents and not being given documentation of their,

of their citizenship in the US. And that's going to, if past experience dictates or is correct, that will prove to be a huge problem for people when trying to prove their citizenship as they get older. But this is not something new. So, in fact, we have some studies that show that there have been large numbers of people in the United States targeted for deportation. For a long time. There's an ACLU study that shows just in one Miami detention facility, dozens of US citizens who've been dissed, targeted for for deportation. And

we've also seen there's a Cato study as well, that shows in Harris County, Texas, like really large numbers of people have been targeted for deportation.

I don't really think we can honestly say we've seen any indication that President Biden or any of the people who he's working with so far really want to back off from the larger stance of aggressive enforcement. In fact, border security has been a phrase we've heard from a lot of democrats both during the Trump

Trump administration and then we're starting to like I saw Schumer yesterday kind of making some friendly or noises but but border security has been something embraced by a number of prominent Democrats. And it has been at least since Clinton Bill Clinton's presidency.

Biden has proposed a plan for regularizing undocumented immigrants in the United States today. But it's not really predicated on less aggressive enforcement, it's, in many ways probably is a call for certain types of more aggressive enforcement. Biden has also supported and continues to support more temporary short term worker visas for people coming into the US. And, again, it's very safe to assume that if we invite people into the US with no pathway to ever regularizing for short term work opportunities, given the way human beings lives unfold, that will lead to some people becoming undocumented. We know that a large proportion of our current undocumented population

are people who entered with visas and then overstayed their visa, or in some other way became undocumented. And so, you know, that guarantees again,

that there will be more justification offered for growing and maintaining our enforcement machine.

So let me just step back just very briefly and look at this in a little bit of historical context.

People argue about this, but I can the date of the invention of what is often colloquially and unkindly known as illegal immigration. The crime itself only becomes a crime in 1929, when there are penalties imposed by Congress, for being in the country without or entering the country without proper papers. And when we, so we had closed the borders in 1924. And when we reopen the borders in 1965, after those many decades of fairly closed borders, the congressman who agreed to do so

really, very deliberately and openly chose a way of doing so that they thought incorrectly would guarantee that immigrants from countries that have been sending immigrants, you know, for decades, European countries

would would kind of compose the population of people continue to come.

And I just say this, because I think it it kind of demonstrates that we have this sense of ourselves as an immigrant nation that's quite complicated, and circumscribed and a lot of ways. And much of what people don't like about immigration enforcement and nativism right now is very much a part of the tradition of this immigrant nation. country is immigration.

One thing though, that I think has really dramatically changed and changed in the middle of the 20th century, is our commitment to allowing people who are here to stay. And for most of us history, it was sort of really important to try and attract immigrants to the United States, who explicitly said that becoming a citizen and committing to the democracy was their intent, but that's what they wanted to do. And in the 1940s, I think we really make a dramatic shift with our

the creation of brasero and hgvs, as we shift from being a country, where permanence was really important to one in which we were really starting to look for people who would explicitly say that they did not plan to stay in the United States, and not only proliferates after 1965. And as you can see, with Biden's immigration proposals, that remains a really important part of how we think about,

about the border and about people trying to enter the United States. But I think one thing we know is that if we are going to put into place rules that say that people can enter the country, but they absolutely cannot stay. And they will never be given a legal status that allows them to stay in the country. But it is a foregone conclusion that the story of the 21st century will be one of enforcement, we're going to have to enforce as long as we're committed to lots and lots of short term visas. And then keeping almost everyone else out, we can talk about, you know, the refugee camp with the Trump administration that we can talk about closing off opportunities for asylum.

But like, you know, I think the fact that that is not changing indicates that we are still very much in an enforcement moment. Title 42, which is probably illegal, is still in place, and children are still effectively being separated from their families. And we have this have had this back and forth over in the first few months of the binary administration, about the refugee cap, which we were told would be set to about 120. Last, you know, then he backed off of that entirely and said he'll keep Trump's cap,

which is under 20,000. And then last week, they made an announcement that we would go to 60 to five. And in the announcement itself, they said sadly, we will not need this cat, which of course anybody who works in refugee resettlement could have told you because the process is really complicated and takes a long time.

So like, I think we're in this moment where, again, I probably people in this webinar, I don't think this but a lot of the general public really wanted to believe that Trump was was the story here and that the Republican Party maybe is the story.

But I'm like we are the story. It's all and no matter which political party somebody supports

nativist and restrictionist and really counterproductive policies are being pursued in our name.

And ice and CBP are still largely on monitored.

This leaves us with a dilemma and the dilemma is about where to go. And so the last

little bit of this talk, I wanted to talk about the proposal that I make in the book and

and I really hope you know that this is a one part of the work I really

I hope to be able to pursue it, I hope not to have to pursue a lot more work about enforcement violence, although for the short term anyway, that seems likely. But I'd like to talk about regularization. So we have on the table this idea of another,

larger but I think basically 1986 purpose style regularization, less circumscribed, and

possibly qualifying more people unlikely to be accepted by the current Republican Party, but it's still on the table. That's what we're talking about. And one time regularization

are good for some people. But I don't know if they're really good for the way we think about Citizenship and Immigration more generally. So in the book, what I do is I go back to that law in 1929, that in which penalties were created this app called the registry.

And it's really interesting to me, because

this other half of the registry exists that isn't really about undocumented,

and penalties.

It's about relief for people who've been in the country for a long period of time. In that case, there was a widespread acknowledgment that we don't, we weren't really doing a very good job of offering documents to people and then checking those documents. So there were people in the country who hadn't had the opportunity to enter with the proper inspection and papers. And there were also in Congress, while discussing this is very aware of this, people who had simply entered in ways that were considered irregular. And the floor debates about this, like the floor debates about registry in general are extremely nativist. And there's nothing to like about them. But one of the things I find interesting is that there's also this kind of

reading of letters from constituents who are settled in the US and are really worried about being deported, or having to live in the US, kind of without papers and never knowing what's going to happen to them net. And so they're writing these letters to their congressmen who they consider to be their representatives, right? They consider themselves to be constituents, because they put down roots. And congressmen are reading them out or referring to them and saying, like, it would be extremely on American, appalling and embarrassing to turn down my constituents who have been American, even if they don't have authorization and and papers,

to have to say to them, no, we can't help you. And so in the registry act, they create a provision that people who had been in the United States at that point since 1921, would become eligible for, like the 1929 version of pathway to citizenship.

And so that's like, in a way, a one time amnesty, right? Because depends the state to 1921. And it's 1929. And as we know, time only marches forward. So it's only going to attenuate the opportunities over time, but we do update the registry date for time.

And most recently, we updated it in 1986. During the discussions for Orca, we updated it to 1973, which I'm sad to say, right around when I was born, it's really a long time ago now. So it's not like you're like I've seen immigration lawyers online saying, like, you know, finding a unicorn finding somebody who qualifies for registry now. But I think that we should be rethinking registry. And some things I think are good about registry, they tend to require attempts to require a period of residency, which is already a principle very well respected, and not just us, naturalization law. But, you know, the world over this idea that a period of residency qualifies somebody for citizenship is very universally respected. The other thing about registry is it doesn't have to be a one time amnesty, we could in fact, decide we're going to set ourselves a schedule for updating registry every so often. And there thereby provide a way for people to become citizens after they've lived in the United States for a period of time without regard for whether they've over at some point, overstayed a visa, or entered the United States without an inspection.

Our other option is to kind of continue as is at least since 1986, if not earlier, constantly investing more and more in enforcement, and never really addressing the fact that we live in the 21st century and mobility is just a fact of life.

I also think it's worth pointing out I don't personally believe human beings should have to prove their

usefulness and economic productivity to be allowed to exist. But we do know that the US economy benefits in all kinds of ways, not only when we have more open immigration, but when we ensure that foreign born persons in the US have legal status and can naturalize and a one time amnesty just doesn't accomplish all of that.

So that, in a nutshell, is the policy proposal that I think is the most important that I provide as a way forward in the book. I want to just say one more thing before we end, and that is,

when I give public talks on this to people who are interested in immigration, but not necessarily research experts. A question I often get is if I am one of those crazy open borders people. So I just want to speak to that, before it comes up and say something I in the book include just a really alarming set of illustration of how out of control our immigration enforcement system is, there's a lot more I had to edit a lot out. And I think anything that requires such huge budgets, military grade weapons, the appropriation of private and public land for four to five walls,

incarceration of millions of people and lifelong trauma to children and adults have to justify itself.

I'm not really interested in litigating open or close borders, I just think if you want billions of dollars, for something like this, you have to prove that it's doing some good. So I personally think, personally and professionally think that the person defending the status quo has to show me a time in US history when border control and enforcement accomplish something. And that actually turned out to be very hard to do. Do you want to lock up families lock up toddlers

send toddlers into court to be defended, to have their rights defended, along with millions of adults use to show me that it accomplishes something. And that is very hard to do. And if you want to turn our borders into war zone, where parts of the Fourth Amendment are actually really not enforced, you have to show that there's a good reason that I should be giving up my safety and my rights, along with other people around me. And that's almost impossible to do. And if you want immigration policy that funnels money to a few private corporations, and away from national security, you also have to show that that accomplishes something. And that it's really hard to do. Our immigration enforcement regime is in a shambles, because immigration is some kind of problem. Immigration isn't a problem. It's a shambles, because we've left people who have private interests, whether the political or material, steer the ship. And that's not a way to run agencies. It's also deeply corrosive to core principles of democracy. I think the burden of proof lies with people who want to defend things as they are not with people who want to change them.

So we've got some work to do. But my work to do right now is in answering questions. And I hope being able to respond to some of the commentary that I hear it's coming. Thank you so much. Yeah. Thank you so much, Elizabeth, for that wonderful overview. And we're going to turn out and Maggie Peterson, who is going

I think Marjorie just went on mute.

Oh, okay. So we're gonna turn now to Maggie Peters, who will give some comments on this wonderful book. Great. Well, thank you so much, Elizabeth, for your presentation. And for the book, it's a really interesting read, it's a quick read. So if you were

wondering wanting to give something to you and non specialists like, or you know, a family member on this topic, I highly recommend it can also be good in an undergrad class. It's not too technical, but really goes through the big issues. So let me just go through and talk a little bit about the book. So it's sort of split into two halves. The first half really discusses the lawlessness of the immigration enforcement bureaucracy. And the second half talks about the history about how we got there. So I think the first half Okay, I'll start my comments again.

I think this book, and there's two main topics, the first is on the lawlessness. And I'd say that the the first half really makes the case of which all the ways in which CBP and ice have been allowed. And I want to just like focus on that word allowed

to work outside of the norms of US law, and other norms and laws that other agencies have to follow. So it really discusses all these different ways that I don't think people know that ice and CBP don't have to follow like Fourth Amendment protections and due process protections, and that are just really so critical. When we think about

what we what we think about our rights as citizens

I think it also does a pretty good job of explaining how this affects us as citizens. The second half of the book talks about the history and traces the history of this out. And this both the history of enforcement and the history of illegality, and what illegality means and how much it is predicated on the law and how the law changes and not necessarily behavior by anybody has changed, who is and who is not eligible for legal entry and permanent residency and all those good things down the line is really just about these changes in the law. And she highlights a couple really important moments like 1929. And then, of course, the mid 90s. With welfare reform, and Riera and all of the mid 90s reforms. I'd also like to highlight two major themes that are running out the book.

The first is the pathologies of bureaucracy theme, that we talk about, at least in international relations with thinking more about international NGOs and international

organizations. But we can also think about within domestic politics, where you have bureaucracies who want to increase their own wealth, their own stature in government, their own, the size of their budgets, and how much CBP and ice and other enforcement

air groups have really pushed on highlighting undocumented immigration as the threat so that they can increase their own budgets and their own importance. So when you think about, you know, we don't always think about bureaucracy as being its own agent. But here, it's really a good case. So if you need if you're like, I need an example of a pathological bureaucracy. This is really good for you. The other major theme is one that I think is really exciting, and to think about is that is the tension between this norm of settlement equaling citizenship in the United States, and the end the white nationalism, white supremacy that she talks about. So in the presentation, Elizabeth didn't talk as much about the role that white nationalism white supremacy plays in creating these laws. But it really pays plays a really big role, as most people probably know, in the creation of first the national origin quotas, and then even the change to

family reunification. And then also, as we think about this role of enforcement and pushing this norms of enforcement forward, especially around if we think about like, what what else was going on in the mid 90s. So she recommends at the end of the book, I returned to this registry to return to you allowing individuals who've been settled for a while to gain status. And I just want to tell an anecdote about this. Because this past summer, I was talking to some people who were on the Biden campaign, and we're writing up the white papers that went into his plan. And I was like, okay, so you're gonna do an amnesty, but what are we going to do for people who are undocumented in the future? And they're like, well, we're just gonna solve legal immigration, so there's no word I can read and people.

Are you effing kidding me?

You know, that, like, that's what that's not what's gonna happen. There's always going to be people who need to regularize their status. And especially as Elizabeth was hiding, highlighting, is that if we're going to reform the HTA visas and other temporary visa programs, you know, Biden wants to have a path to citizenship for those individuals. But what if that doesn't pass, like what's going to happen to those individuals, or we still want a whole have TPS, but now there's people who've been under TPS for, you know, 20 years now plus, and so you're like, it shouldn't have some point. We think, you know, it is no longer temporary protected status, it needs to be full, you know, status.

And also, she makes this really interesting argument that we need. So this goes to like her comments about whether or not you are open borders or not, it's just that we need to rollback the laws. And by rollback it by rolling back the laws we will have,

enforcement will have less to do and by having less to do it will then lose its need to exist to the same extent, which I thought was a really interesting idea. And one that I think definitely comes from a theorist and not necessarily from an empiricist like myself, I wouldn't have necessarily thought about that angle.

So I have a couple of questions or thoughts.

One is, especially in the in the 90s.

I guess I wanted a little bit more links between how white nationalism pushes

Yes, enforcement agenda in comparison to the law and order agenda that we see going on at the same time, and I think they're actually part and parcel the same thing. So in addition to Elizabeth's book highlights the like 1980s, Reagan welfare reforms that then go into the 90s, you know, the tropes about who's the welfare queen as being very racialized. Everything about the law and order frame to that was highly racialized discussions of super predators, that sort of thing was all highly racialized. And so I think just connecting that a little bit more, would have been helpful.

And then for some reason, not all my comments, save.

And so then I just wanted to think about as the last thought, for this group, and for Elizabeth, and just in general, is, is reform possible of these agencies. So my my thing about that is, she really nicely traces how the border patrol in particular has just been a lawless organization since like the beginning of its of its creation. And so even though we know that some people who are in a CBP agents end up because the CBP pays really well and has good benefits, and it's like, the only good thing going at their border town, or like the best job going there, border town. But we also know that lots of people select into it. And so can we actually reform the culture at all? Do we need to basically fire everybody and start over?

How might we think about that?

And, and just thinking about whether reform in this space is possible, then I guess one last comment is, on the public opinion side, I was trying to think about how this would work. Because what I hear from former Obama officials is, you know, they did a lot of enforcement, because they said, you know, the republicans were always like, we have to secure our borders. First. They said, Okay, let's secure our borders first, and then let's try to do reform.

And that didn't work. So is there ever is there how do we redo public opinion? How do we move people forward such that we can get out of this enforcement first mindset and actually focus on reform?

Thank you, actually, probably sit engaged you to give my book talk because you pulled out so much important stuff to it after you said it was like, why don't I say?

So thank you so much. And of course, thank you for your kind words, and for giving me an opportunity to bring that some of the material that I had sidelined into the discussion.

So, yeah, I

I would like to start with your question about white supremacy. And, you know, one of the things I bring into the picture in the book is like, I think

there is this image we have of white supremacy in the United States of being like the

tool or

comfort or kind of,

you know, place of, of last resort for people who have experienced disenfranchisement, or who are disadvantaged or who view themselves as being in some way low status, or treated as if they're low status. And it really interesting pattern to me, is that from 19 2024 onward, which is really the period that I talk about, the people

pushing the white supremacy angle or the white power angle, at the outset, are almost always highly educated, affluent, high status elite. So it was you know, Harvard and Princeton educated people in the 1920s. And when it comes back, right, we see people like john Panton getting Mellon money. JOHN Hampton is, is you know, an ophthalmology

person with a an MD, who is affiliated with a bunch of organizations, some of which are, remain reputable.

Like Sierra Club,

just pushing, pushing, pushing on a public that general even to this day, when asked reasonably worded questions about immigration, likes the idea of immigration and feels positively disposed towards immigrants, immigrants living in the United States.

So, so there's this way in which, you know, already powerful people are using white supremacy and then trying to bring less powerful people along so that they have a larger base of

Public opinion to champion white supremacist measures and legislation. I think this then

draws us into the question you asked, which is like, Okay, so what happens? And

I think probably right, there's this strain of elite white nationalism, and white supremacy that we see like, even in the opening in 1965, right. So the people creating family reunification really thought this was going to be used to bring more Europeans into the United States. And

that will show you I think, the Ivy League education many of us have, that's why you common sense, because that's not what happened. But, you know, you only have to fast forward like 15 years, and you're seeing just a lot of panic, in the form of the war on drugs, which is inextricable from the early, early stages of the build up of mass incarceration, and war on drugs really quickly becomes a discussion about

about border borders, and Border Patrol and what we can do to stop the movement of stuff. And the people that bring that stuff. So already, even, like, in the late 70s, early 80s, if you look at like the Presidential Commission, they were talking in language that was very much

carceral and enforcement oriented. And, you know, it's always surprising to my students, that the am is only amnesty we've really ever had mass amnesty. Ergo was, was generated under Republicans, Republican leadership, but like, that was still a moment in which the overall idea much like 1929 was we do this so that we can then it going forward, enforced better, enforced better, we'll fix our mistake, and then we'll enforce better and at the time, it was drugs, and then and you see it in popular culture, right. There's all this reinforcement, and movies,

Scarface all of these things people are seeing, and then we're the first attack on the World Trade Center. And then, like this kind of also racialized view of national security gets pulled into the picture. And you see, some of the organizations that Canton founded

or helped found get into the business of like talking about threat, speaking about threat coming from a variety of different places, not just now drugs and guns, but also

terrorist threats to people's security, which I think we now know, mostly come from within the United States.

But but it is constantly this elite driven well resourced movement to make people afraid.

And so like to answer,

I have a couple other things to say. But like to answer your last question, I really, like was told, and I'm not sure how I feel about this. I was told when I wrote this book by

people who I was working with, like,

well, selling book on politics makes people afraid. And I didn't really like that general principle. But the answer to your question, I think, how do we get people to kind of public opinion to back away from what they've been told about law and order, and enforcement is to really make them recognize that we all regardless of our citizenship status, has something to be afraid of, if we have this large an out of control a police force in the United States with powers that no other police have a lot of money, a lot of weapons, a lot of power.

So I'm felt like I could be an exception, in the my general principle that you should be making people afraid, I think we should be afraid of ice and Customs and Border Protection.

And I could say a lot more. I'll just say one more thing, though. And that's in response to your question about like, Can we really fix

these agencies? And you're right, Border Patrol at work itself, which is under Customs and Border Protection has always been a problem. It was a problem before we created a border patrol. I mean, there were really, as I'm sure many of you know, really violent, basically poke around, in some cases carried out by like Texas Rangers. As you know, before we had Border Patrol, there was this type of stuff happening.

And I think, you know, like Rhys Jones has a book by the title like borders are violent places. They're places where violence happens, and they generate other types of violence that's not happening necessarily in their proximity. So in one sense, orders are violence. And no, we can't fix any anything that has to do with

borders, if borders themselves are violent, but

we can first of all, like, DHS is a disaster, it was obviously a just disaster from the outset. It's a very new organization. It's only been around since 2002. And everybody knew it was a rush job at the time, even though it was the biggest reorganization the federal government since the Department of Defense was created. Like we don't have to have DHS,

we can back away from that.

It's hard for people to imagine but it is a new agency, so we can undo some of the damage that we've done. And if we fix 96 of people like to say, right, if we can back away from that as well, then

we can start with newer newer agencies that just simply don't have the types of powers and resources that allow them to be as out of control as they are. But that should not be taken as a denial that the border itself will does generate violence, because that is very true.

Okay.

Thank you for the responses there. We have a couple of questions in the chat. And I don't see any raised hands yet. So shall we go to the questions in the chat?

Let's see, there was one of the above, I get to scroll up. Brian rich poses. I haven't read the book, but you touch on all the other forms of illegal behavior employees, hiring landlords renting coyotes, trafficking, fake document providers, etc, that are connected to undocumented immigrants. So maybe a little more of

Yeah, so I, I don't spend that much time talking about that. But I do think a lot about kind of outsourcing a federal responsibilities in general. And the fact that, like, there's a long history in the United States, that goes back

to the very early years of the country in which

the work of enforcing immigration laws, or free movement restrictions, was outsourced. And

it's kind of it's like a tough line to walk. Because on the one hand, the outsourcing is a problem in the sense that we're all being turned into agents of the federal government who are expected to inform on people or turn people in or, you know, in the case of local law enforcement to

respond positively to detainer, requests, things like that. And,

you know, those are opportunities for us to resist, but they become harder to resist as, as those sets of

demands

are, are themselves that are enforced. I,

I don't think most of the basis for the enforcement is very justifiable. So in essence, I don't think there's much of a distinction and the justifiability of asking an employer to enforce versus asking an agent to enforce both of them are problematic.

And, and the only thing I'll say is, I've been pleased to see, you know, to be living in a city and the other cities turn

their energies toward resisting those requests. And in so doing, stating a commitment to principle of the rights, human rights and the rights of people who weren't born in the United States to to be able to live here.

Okay, so we have a few more questions from Ruby Johnston. Sorry if this is a late question, or if this was mentioned before, but we would like to know your opinion on the farm workforce Modernization Act that was passed by the House.

I'm wondering if you can ask your question more specifically, like, what about it? You want to know?

Come on. Right.

And, and Nance address the question. There we go. You found a way in? Sure. Hi, um, I was kind of more wondering about, like, the controversies with the E verify system that's like connotated to the farmworkers Modernization Act, because I know, it poses some question just between relations between employees and employers. And I was just wondering if you had any insight on that?

Yeah. Okay. So I wasn't sure if we were going to be talking about like selective regularization or enforcement.

And like I, in a way, I think, I think what I said prior, I will say about this, which is like, I really

don't think that we should be looking to ask employers to be enforcement agents.

But I also think that it does provide opportunities for resistance.

In some cases,

you know, I think, like

a lot of the work, the research that I did into the technologies and

the databases that keep track of people lead me to believe that when we think we're doing a better job of tracking where people are or what their status is, or when they need to leave the country or work authorization, things like that, just as soon as we think we've updated our technology, I think usually what we've done is create more opportunities for more authoritative enforcement, against people in some cases are rightfully there. But

again, in general, I think we shouldn't be asked, we shouldn't be privatizing the city function.

Okay, here's a question about differences from Jonathan vukovich. Our differences at fixed Border Patrol checkpoints along the northern and southern border, especially racial appropriate racially profiling home to stop to question if the agents think the passing people that seem to don't look like citizens, so

yeah, so it's, I, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you're

asking if there's profiling at the northern border, and I will just say if there's profiling at the northern border, there's a lot of profiling at the northern border. And,

you know, like, I think that the southern border just is more militarized. The Customs and Border Protection has gotten the budget for and authorization to purchase and has come in possession of a lot of military grade weapons. And, and you see these at the northern border, as well as southern border, even though there's a much more regular presence at the southern border. But like, to me, it was not a huge surprise when we saw

in 2020. In Portland, and in Minneapolis, we saw

DHS drones and DHS agents grabbing people off the street surveillance, sorry, the drones weren't grabbing people off the street, the agents were the drones surveilling like the tactics are and the materials are federal, and they're in both places.

The other thing we've seen is like, you know, the northern border. So one of the things I talked about in the book is the fact that

DHS has these special exemptions carved out from what are otherwise Fourth Amendment requirements and restrictions placed on law enforcement agents. So that creates opportunity for this isn't a fix for it, Border Patrol question, but it I think it's still relevant to what you're asking.

In terms of like surveilling and entering property. There's lots of property on the northern border that gets surveilled and entered all the time in. Some of it falls under the Fourth Amendment, carve outs for CBP. And some of it actually doesn't. So I know that you see more stories from journalists written up about Customs and Border Protection kind of pushing right up against the limits of their powers or going over those limits at the southern border because there's just more volume and it's where people's attention is focused. But

there's lots of areas in the northern border where you also see CBP going on people's property, surveilling setting up cameras, trying to do like their own little sting operation. So I think there's more there's, there's more in common than there are differences. I think it's a really great question. But I think they're actually CBP is CBP wherever you go.

Okay, David has a question Henry's?

Yes. Thanks very much for the book, which I have not yet had a chance to read, but I'm looking forward to it. I started a question about privatization. And to what extent is your objection rooted in political philosophy? Or do you also have empirical evidence that privatized detention for example, leads to more abuses than a detention by government forces. Um,

so we have evidence of a lot of

abuse on the part of like private detention facilities. And in the book, I do go through like some really

representative instances of privately run

Youth facilities and then privately run prisons, and ice prisons and the ways in which we see high levels of abuse there.

You know, I think that the problem is a little bit bigger in scope than just like, are they are they worth? So? I didn't do a calculation of like, Are there more abuses in private facilities and in publicly run facilities? In Part, you know, because people are moved around a lot. And I think that, you could do that. But I would have a lot of questions about the, you know, what that would involve.

But the thing about the private facilities is that it creates this very likely incentive, or very strong incentive for harsher enforcement, because the contracts, usually our contracts for like, you know, heads embed. And so there's

new work coming from.

I think this study is just starting from Angelina Godoy at University of Washington that I think is going to try to demonstrate on a larger scale what she demonstrated in a pilot study, which is

that it's not so much that we create these, like have these contracts and create these opportunities for private enforcement, because there's just too much for the federal government to do, or because they're more efficient. In fact, like they get perpetuated because the contracts themselves incentivize more enforcement. So I think that lens is one of the most useful ways to think about it. As long as we have private companies that have money, you know, want to earn money, then they're going to ensure that

there's a lot of enforcement activity happening, when you look at the lobbying numbers, like the amount they spend lobbying in the 2000s, when the build up starts is just like it just going from very little to immense amounts of money flowing into lobbying,

for contract, essentially, so that they can keep their contracts and get more contracts.

Okay, I think it's Roger next with a question. And then Nathan, Sharon, if you'd like to come on and ask your question, when Roger finishes, seems

you're muted.

Thank you very much. It's a really very interesting and stimulating talk. And I have a variety of question, I'm going to only post two and then I'll get back to you separately with email. But so I have two questions. One, I guess bigger picture one, a bit smaller, but the two are related. So I was very struck when you said that we're all responsible for the problem that you've identified. But then you kind of took that direction, I didn't anticipate what I thought you would say, was that we're all responsible, because we all believe in migration control. And that much of the many of the problems and much of the violence that we find is inherent in the process of migration control, because it entails an unacceptable constraint on human freedom. But you didn't go that way. And the end, you said that you put the burden, you put, you put the burden on the defenders of the existing system of border control, but or migration control. But it seems to me that, you know, migration control is a constituent feature of the state system, but it is everywhere. And so

one could ask a kind of thought experiment. So

I mean, and that migration control, as practiced in the United States, of course, reflects all of the terrible aspects of us society, that is a much more militarized route, more police more brutal society than many of the other

advanced societies around us that also practice migration control. So could one ask the thought experiment, let's, let's, let's say that one could transplant the best aspects of a less brutal

and, and more open system migration control, let's say the Canadian or the Swedish, and one could somehow another implant that went to the United States. And now of course, that system would have to take would have to deal with some of the consequences of,

of both the inherent features of the of the United States, that is where it's located. The fact that as a 2000 mile border with a less developed society would still poorer societies to the south of that country, as well as the fact that it has a history of so much migration, but would how much better would that be, if somehow the we could turn the United States into Canada and Sweden with that

Would that would that be an acceptable limitation on human freedom as far as you're concerned? And how would you justify that? So that's question number one. And question number two, is, in some ways related. And that is, it seems to me that I mean, that

that and weight is reflected on your talk that there's a consistent divide between what to do about the inside and what to do about the outside and your policy recommendation. I mean, your your focus is about the inside registry. But that leaves open the question what to do about the outside what to do about those people who would love to come to the United States for whom the coming to the United States would make life much better, but can't currently come in. And one of the arguments that is out there in the literature, and that I think is relevant to your concern is the following.

The Americans, like people all over the world are resistant to more immigration. And that means that the people who would benefit from migration can't, at least they can to the extent that would be good for them. So wouldn't an acceptable compromise be to actually have larger and more effective programs of temporary migration, as long as one can keep people circulating? As long as you let people work in the United States for 369 for 12 years? Well, that does a tremendous amount of good for their families. And in fact, it's consistent with what they want to do themselves. So of course, they can't become citizens. But if you could manage such a program successfully, wouldn't that be, wouldn't that be significant improvement over what we currently have, and would be an acceptable compromise between the citizens preference for closure, and the advantages of greater human mobility? So those are two big questions. I apologize for putting them

on your plan.

We should be asking the question.

So would we be better if we are Canada or Sweden?

You know, I,

I'm very good. But what would it be acceptable to you? Of course, we'd be better if we were, but with a couple constraints on human freedom, as far as you're concerned? That's my question to you.

Right now, I think we're in the position of having let people choose things that as you say, are actually in their interest

as our main set of policy,

policies towards migration, and so like,

when would it be acceptable to me to have something like a point system?

I, I have some I have doubts about point systems. I mean, I think the the, the idea that like,

whether it's high skilled migration, which kind of bleeds into your second question, or which, you know, like highly paid job migration, or other ways in which we force people to prove that their value to a society they're about to enter, there, there's like a pretty big discrepancy between the way we're treating citizenship for people who who get it automatically. And then people who are asking for it that it's like, pretty hard to justify just saying you have to be useful or have skills or the number of other things for which people can get points in a point system doesn't, to me, I don't find particularly appealing. And

so the question then becomes like, the bigger challenge that you started with, which is, is our border controls, something that we have to have. And, you know, we started our we start our

modern Border Patrol and kind of border enforcement system, with probably a stronger commitment to what was coming over the border than just who was coming over the border. Like we start with arguments about a lot of arguments about contraband and vice behaviors.

And I kind of was, you know, played with in the book, in writing the book, the idea that maybe we would be much better off if we simply

worked on the idea that we're going to keep some stuff out and stopped trying to keep people out for a while and see what happens. Because right now, anyway, I don't think we're in the position where we would be

necessarily worse off if we stopped, you know, letting people into the country, then the question is, on what basis do we let people into the country if we simply let everybody who wants to come into the country come? Do we let them in on like you're saying temporary work visas, but maybe you also want to include temporary

texted status in that.

And I won't even like force you to compel you to commit to the the kind of TPS that Maggie referenced in which it's like permanent TPS. But, you know,

I think about this all the time, my first book was on the idea that democracies have classes of people who never get full rights of citizenship or people who cycle between having extensive rights and not having extensive rights and temporariness is a really big part of that, whether it's being permanently on a three year renewable visa, or being allowed to come as part of some kind of like global redistribute redistributive program. And

I think the obvious answer to that is like, well, this is not that good for people. It's like, a little bit good, but not good for people who, who would really prefer today. But the less obvious thing is what what do we call ourselves, when we become a society in which were really enthusiastically committed to the existence of a permanent semi citizen never will have rights class of people who, for whom there's not like really a good just get justification with democratic theory for being

disenfranchised, and, and like, that's gonna put us, you know, in a category of politics that I think we don't really want to be in, we are in that position, we have been in that position for a while, and the

trash like the slice of people who are in the US on this kind of indefinite temporary status.

Crew right under Obama, because of DACA. Because DACA has no particular pathway to citizenship.

And I just, I just don't see how you look at people living large portions of their life somewhere, even if they're kind of, you know, coming back on renewable visas and say, this is something you can do and call yourself some kind of Republic or democracy. So I'd be really loath to commit to that to a lot of temporary visas even if it does some redistributive work.

Okay, we have another big picture question. Nathan's gonna come on in and

ask his question.

Hello, Professor Cohen. I was an undergrad and one of your classes the politics of citizenship.

Remember you so, so great to see you again. My question is a bit more of a big picture question. And I completely agree with your argument that ice and CPB and similar agencies make all of us less safe, not just those who are directly and disproportionately targeted, like undocumented immigrants. But I'm also wondering if you can speak about the close ties between US law enforcement in the interior and immigration enforcement and other countries. It's well known that the US exports many of its law enforcement strategies abroad, leading to a dramatic increase in the militarization of police and borders around the world. And I think also exacerbating a lot of the crises we're facing,

both, you know, economic crises of mobility, and all of that. But I've recently read that the US has given $200 million dollars to Mexico to fortify its borders between 2014 and 2019. to deter migrants from coming to the US border, thereby giving tacit permission to use as much violence as may be necessary with you know, the caravan in 2018, kind of bringing that to, you know, ahead. But such strategies of containment within the nation state or of offshoring enforcement, other countries is convincing me that perhaps we need a political and theoretical lens that moves beyond the state entirely. And I just think that in a lot of these discussions, not that I'm, you know, an expert, but it just seems to me that the way we talk about migration is as if it's very linear. And not that there's a lot of circularity involved, and people are constantly on the move. And I just think that I don't want to necessarily do away with borders entirely, but perhaps make them more porous, and set up some kind of system, you know, but not one that necessarily has to be linked to an individual state. So I'm not sure like, those are really big questions. You know, I'm still thinking about a lot of this stuff, but I'm just curious to know what you think. Thank you. Thank you. It's super nice to see a former student.

And so there's a there's kind of a theme in the last few questions about like how far we can push challenges to borders.

That leads to challenges to state sovereignty and basis and more generally, and I do think like so I just

Brought up this idea of why don't we try and control, you know, the stuff but not people. Another way to think about this is why don't we put the onus so I'm I'm

ultimately realist enough to save the state system, you know, we can imagine things beyond the state system, the system is not going anywhere.

At least with respect to human movement, not in the very near future, we could start to think about putting the onus on the state to come up with better justification for,

for keeping people from moving. And so perhaps something like a, I know, it's hard to imagine, but a global pandemic, sorry, that's redundant, a pandemic would actually be a justifiable assertion of

the state, the state and state power to stop movement, at least on a temporary basis, whereas like, your country's visa limit has been reached is maybe a little bit less justifiable and, and start to demand better justification for keeping people from moving, which would in turn, address your

thing you bring up, which is on claiming, right, the idea that borders tend to force people to stay in place on what they want to do is be able to travel back and forth from lots of different places.

He started your question with reference to the fact that the US exports lots of its techniques, and a lot of resources as well to do border control work, in some cases, on behalf of the United States, and in some cases, just on behalf of the idea of holding people in place, because it is something that that seems desirable to states, at least

all other things being equal. And right, we're not just doing this with like, we have long standing arrangements with Mexico. And in fact, I think one of the things I I highlight in the book, or I bring up in the book is the fact that when we initially started really building a border patrol,

Mexico was an extremely enthusiastic participant because they didn't want a lot of the people who were leaving Mexico to leave, knowing that those people would then be more likely to be stuck in the United States, because they couldn't simply cross the border, fluidly as people had done.

Before Border Patrol became really serious business. But like, so it was like there was a mutual advantage arrangement there in which we were collaborating.

Now,

there's, it's less clearly just mutual mutual advantage, although in some cases, I think Mexico has been an enthusiastic participant and in preventing mobility, but we're also involved, at least rhetorically in this idea that we're going to somehow

correct the sources of instability in northern triangle countries that are causing people to to migrate to have to leave and seek asylum in the United States. And

I kind of wonder to myself, can we possibly compensate for the damage that we did, because a lot of the instability, economic instability,

and violence is us origin, right? It has to do with exploitive arrangements that the US government was a part of, in some cases, and then the fact that we deported people from prisons in the US where they had become members of us gangs that flourished in, in northern triangle countries. So

I am leery of us doing more. Because in the past, mostly, the ways in which we've become involved in this kind of like remote control operation have, like made things worse for everybody, for the people who are nativist for people in other countries who may have interests at stake, either staying where they are or leaving.

Just no good seems to come of those particular strategies.

So yeah, thank you for that question.

Well, I'd like to see if anyone, if there's any other questions, otherwise, I was going to try to formulate it another big picture question.

So let me get take a stab at that. Um, you know, it strikes me you give us a perspective on the contemporary situation, and it is grounded in this historical over the last 100 years former attempts to do this registry or the version of the pathways to citizenship

is 100 years enough of I mean, what would it mean to think beyond

and I do very much wonder about it.

Well, or even if time is an I know you have another book that that times the political value of it. So maybe there's a way of thinking about

what time periods are we projecting to futures?

How do we address immediate the immediacy of this issues and see its development over time and project into the future. So when I project into the future, I think about climate change, and I think about ecological

change that is prompting new movements and, and maybe even opening up new new spaces for people to move to. How do we bring that big picture perspective? How would you bring it as a political scientist to think about the immediacy of how we make policy about border issues right now? Yeah, that's a fair question. But it's the kind of

question I mean, I think immediate, immediate, the most immediate thing that we need to think about is

stopping our carceral and militarized approach to immigration, right, because like,

we've got no evidence that even if even if you're like pretty nativist, you've, we've got no evidence that locking a lot of people up is doing anybody any good. And we have lots of evidence that

putting, putting weapons into the hands of people are supposed to do border enforcement.

That doesn't change migration patterns, big migration numbers very much, but it does, like lead to lots of things that no matter what side you're on, even if what you want to do is say CVP is great. It's like that's not actually making Border Patrol, or Customs and Border Protection, and like, pretty good. So I think like, kind of moving

to something at least before 1996, when we created the opportunity for mass incarceration of non citizens, both people with,

you know,

weight loss, lawful permanent residents, people on short term visas, and people who are irregular migrants, like, across the board, just what happened was a boon to a very few people, but not good for anybody else, and serving no material or principal and interest. So I think that's like

the immediate question, when I think about

the longer view,

I don't just agree with you that climate change and ecological change are things we need to think about, you know, we are starting very belatedly, I think, really study climate,

make projections about climate change, and migration. And we know like there are countries now that have had to secure a new space for themselves, because the sea level sea levels have made

it impossible for their citizens to live there.

And I will say, I'm not like that particular set of questions is not my greatest area of expertise. And that I think long term we have to be thinking about,

particularly from from within the United States, we have to be thinking about, about how we secure rights for people. And

so one thing that I think is interesting about an EN, like, something good to say about the United States is the United States is really the first country where you see full naturalization embrace. So naturalization as it existed in European countries was never really like approaching full citizenship.

And it becomes a very different thing in the US very early on, right 17, nine years, when we first started to do this thing where people can actually become full citizens with almost no distinction between a naturalized citizen and a native born citizen. And that was important because it was a statement of principle and equality, but also for practical purposes, it was important because the idea was that this would actually attract people to do less. We still need to attract people to the end hated pets, like, you know, I don't know if anybody's read the paper or listen to the news this week, or were concerned about the future of the size of the population, the age of the population and the workforce and the population. We're not doing ourselves any favors by catering to really misguided nativist, but,

but we do have to be thinking about the facts.

That

our tradition has been for a really good reason that people can acquire full citizenship and become full citizens that they don't, we don't have we're not the Gulf states, in the Gulf states model of like, you know, a huge proportion of the population or long term non citizens, there's very few rights. So I think, you know, moving away from the direction we've been going, which is large population of people without full rights of citizenship is what we, at least in the medium to long term should be thinking about. And that does draw in my other work on time in which I talked about the fact that, you know, we tend to use time as a measure of people's process of becoming citizens, and that we could be doing that for people whose time right now has been devalued, right? People who've been in this country without authorization, or with short term visa, in some cases for decades with and that none of that time counts towards their political status right now, but we could change that. So that's where I go with that question. Thank you. I've enjoyed all the big picture questions that we've been grappling with a bit here. Do we have any other questions from our audience?

I think we're about it time. So

if there are no other questions, we'll conclude by thanking you for sharing with us this book. We look forward we are I don't know what everyone else but I look forward to reading the full book was the intro was a teaser. Thanks to Maggie for the comments. Thanks to all of you for

coming out. And we'll have another session next week. Sophia, can you put that in the chat or anything they should know about that?

And, yeah, thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks so much, Maggie, for the comments and everybody for the invitation and for engaging and for coming back after we were accidentally kicked off

technological challenges but it works. Thank you. Thank you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai