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ANA RAQUEL MINIAN

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The Long Troubled History of US Immigration Detention and the Case for Ending It

WQED Forum

During the Trump Administration, scenes of children separated from parents and placed in chain link cells that looked like cages caused a national outcry. But the policy of immigration detention in the U.S. is far from new. WQED Forum's Alexis Madrigal spoke with Ana Minian about why she believes immigrant detention doesn’t make us safer and her recommendations for a different path forward.

America Turned Against Migrant Detention Before. We Can Do It Again.

Time

People detained without trial. Separated from their children. Denied basic constitutional rights. Unaware of when they will be released or even if they will be released. Subjected to beatings and other torture. Americans have long pinned these abuses to far-off regimes and distant times: Nazi Germany, Pinochet’s Chile, the Soviet Union. In reality, however, in the United States, people are being subjected to such violent and unconstitutional treatment on a daily basis. This is the world of immigrant detention.

Immigrant Detention Should Have No Place in Our Society

NYTimes

In May 2018, Fernando Arredondo and his 12-year-old daughter, Andrea, reached the U.S.-Mexico border. [They] walked to a Border Patrol processing center in Laredo, Texas, and asked for asylum, a right guaranteed by U.S. law. Still, an immigration official took Andrea from Mr. Arredondo and placed them in different cells. Hours later, the officials lined up a group of children, including Andrea, and drove them away without explanation.

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America Didn't Always Lock Up Immigrants

NYTimes

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, millions of Americans have commiserated with the plight of Ukrainian refugees who are being forced to flee their country. But many of these same Americans remain oblivious or unsympathetic to the continuing horrors faced by the refugees arriving at their own shores.

The Complicated History of the 1986 Amnesty Law That Changed the Lives of Millions

KQED

In the podcast Out of the Shadows: Children of 86, Patty Rodriguez and co-host Erick Galindo speak with Ana Raquel Minian about the complicated legacy of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, which provided amnesty and a path to legal status to millions of undocumented residents.

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We Already Have a Big, Beautiful Wall

The Washington Post

President Trump is once again insisting that Mexico will pay for the “beautiful wall” he wants to build along the country’s border with the United States. Even more than Mexicans, [the] wall would target the thousands of Guatemalans, Salvadorans and Hondurans who have increasingly fled north to escape poverty and violence. When it comes to these Central American migrants, a wall already exists. And Mexico helped build it. In fact, Mexico is the wall.

Historian’s New Book on Mexican Migration is Perfectly Timed

The World

Ana Raquel Minian grew up in Mexico City where, at home, “politics was discussed at the dinner table pretty much every day,” she says. But to learn more about her own country, she decided to study its ties to the US. She started digging, studying history at Yale University. Then, after a decade of research, she published her book, Undocumented Lives: The Untold Story of Mexican Migration.

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“What He Said Was Basically a Form of Eugenics”: on Trump’s “Shithole Countries” Remarks

Vox

Immigration laws are one of the ways in which we make the national body. It’s one of the ways in which we decide, as a country, who we want here and who we don’t. Immigration and births are the way to build a population. What he [Trump] said was basically saying, “This is the population we want: people from places like Norway.” White people. We don’t want people from African countries or from Haiti. That’s what’s really symbolic here.

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The Long History of the U.S. Immigration Crisis

Foreign Affairs

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, millions of Americans have commiserated with the plight of Ukrainian refugees. But many remain oblivious or unsympathetic to the continuing horrors faced by the refugees arriving at their own shores. In 2021, the Biden administration announced that it would be relaunching the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), best known as the Remain in Mexico policy. This policy, which began in 2019, allowed U.S. authorities to send asylum seekers to wait out the duration of their U.S. immigration proceedings on the Mexican side of the border.

How A Border Wall Could Stop Mexicans From Leaving The U.S.

WBUR Here & Now

President Trump on Tuesday night vowed to start his proposed wall along the U.S.- Mexico border "ahead of schedule," saying that it would be an "effective weapon against drugs and crime." Here & Now's Eric Westervelt speaks with Stanford professor Ana Raquel Minian, who says more Mexicans have been leaving the U.S. in recent years than coming in. She believes the wall could have the unintended consequence of discouraging more from leaving.

Increased Border Security is Why So Many ‘Dreamers’ are Here in the First Place

Los Angeles Times

President Trump has indicated for months that he is willing to resolve the status of nearly 800,000 so-called Dreamers in exchange for funds to build his “beautiful wall” and to increase border security. Although funding for Trump’s wall remains a hotly debated topic, there does seem to be consensus that increased border security should be a condition for fixing DACA. But this view ignores history. Increased border security is why there are so many Dreamers in the United States in the first place.

How Trump’s Wall Rhetoric Changes Lives in Mexico

The New Yorker

A major issue for congressional negotiators was the number of immigrants held in detention. While Trump has been ramping up detention numbers, including of people seeking asylum, Democrats have been pushing back. Ultimately, lawmakers agreed to fund just more than forty-five thousand beds, which would decrease the number of detained immigrants by about seventeen per cent. The debate over how many people the U.S. should detain has skirted a larger question: Why does America detain so many illegal immigrants and asylum seekers in the first place?

A Firsthand Look at the Horrors of Immigration Detention

The Washington Post

Photographs and audio of inconsolable children crying for their parents, housed in what Sen. Jeff Merkley described as “cages” and “dog kennels,” have shocked the nation. Pediatricians and child psychologists reported that these conditions would lead to long-term trauma and attachment disorders. How could it be possible for everyday life to remain the same for most of McAllen’s residents amid this humanitarian crisis?

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