Filter by:

Filter by published date

Illustration of armed and hooded Ku Klux Klan members.

Masked Terror

ICE officers are wearing masks to conceal their identities. The Ku Klux Klan also employed masks to avoid prosecution for its acts of racial violence.
Trump looks at border wall construction prototypes.
partner

The Militarization of Immigration Enforcement is Not Unique to Trump

Angry that ICE is ripping families apart? Don’t just blame Trump. Blame Clinton, Bush and Obama, too.
Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, and Kristi Noem, look at rows of bunk beds behind chain link fence in a detention center.

Don’t Call it ‘Alligator Alcatraz.’ Call it a Concentration Camp.

This facility’s purpose fits the classic model, and its existence points to serious dangers ahead for the country.
Demonstrators against ICE in Pasadena, California.

Emma Tenayuca Championed Class Struggle and Migrant Rights

Labor activist Emma Tenayuca led Mexican American women in San Antonio’s legendary pecan shellers’ strike. Today, we can learn from her example.
A row of California National Guardsmen stand atop a top step in riot gear.

Trump’s Deportation Frenzy Echoes the Fugitive Slave Hunts of the 1850s

Trump's crackdown on immigrants bears alarming parallels to the fugitive slave obsessions of the pre-Civil War South.
President Calvin Coolidge raising his hand behind a podium to be sworn into office.
partner

Behind America’s First Comprehensive Federal Immigration Law

Even as the primary targets of immigration restrictionism have shifted, the consequences for immigrants remain profoundly shaped by the system created in 1924.
Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan wave at inauguration in 1981
partner

Reagan’s War on Drugs Also Waged War on Immigrants

Lawmakers are undoing the worst parts of 1980s drug legislation, but they have forgotten its ties to immigration enforcement.
A Border Patrol agent stands by an opening in the U.S. Mexico Border wall.
partner

Trump’s Border Wall Belongs to Biden Now

A border policy divorced from history can’t do what policymakers want.
Street protest in Hamburg, Germany

The Black Refugee Tradition

Undocumented Black migrants struggle to have their asylum rights recognized in the United States. Groups have been asking President Biden to stop deportations.
Artwork depicting The Statue of Liberty's back.

America Never Wanted the Tired, Poor, Huddled Masses

The U.S. is a diverse nation of immigrants—but it was not intended to be, and its historical biases continue to haunt the present.
A picture of a man and a graffiti wall

The Origins of an Early School-to-Deportation Pipeline

Appeals to childhood innocence helped enshrine undocumented kids’ access to education. But this has also inadvertently reinforced criminalization.
Workers exit a Koch Foods Inc., plant in Morton, Mississippi, during an ICE raid.
partner

The Poultry Industry Recruited Them. Now ICE Raids Are Devastating Their Communities.

How immigrants established vibrant communities in the rural South over a quarter-century.
partner

For Private Prisons, Detaining Immigrants Is Big Business

Today, despite their mixed record, private prison companies are overseeing the vast majority of undocumented migrants.

Why It’s Fair to Compare the Detention of Migrants to Concentration Camps

Not every concentration camp is Auschwitz. The term is much older.

Refugee to Detainee: How the U.S. is Deporting Those Seeking a Safe Haven

Since the 1994 Crime Bill signed into law by Bill Clinton, refugees have been deported in droves. And Southeast Asians are being targeted.
Alligator

Why Do Fascists Dream Of Alligators?

Long before the new detention facility in Florida, the reptile has featured in the fantasies of Southern racists.
Wanto Company storefront with a sign that reads "I am an American."

Alien Enemies

The torturers have been revising, the gestapos have been busy, and the prisons have been full for generations.
Declaration of Independence marked up with red marker.

Here Are the Declaration of Independence’s Grievances Against King George III. Many Apply to Trump.

It’s uncanny.
A Los Angelas police officer walks away from a police cruiser with a damaged windshield.

"Corporate America’s Security Guards In-Blue": State Violence and Latinx Protest in Los Angeles

Los Angeles has a history of Latinx protest; one that is often marred by police violence.
A guard watching prisoners at CECOT prison in El Salvador in 2025.

The Roots of Bukele’s Gulag

Understanding why Trump is using El Salvador to test the limits of illegal deportation requires returning to the US’s long history of outsourcing violence.
A protester holds a "Patriots don't tolerate tyranny" sign. Other signs advocate for the rule of law over kings and tyranny.

The Freedom-Loving Minutemen of Massachusetts Strike Again

Just down the road from Lexington and Concord, American patriots scurried to defend their immigrant neighbors.
Donald Trump at Lancaster Airport on November 3, 2024, in Lititz, Pennsylvania.

This Is America

Donald Trump’s authoritarian second term has led critics to describe him as a fascist in the mold of Adolf Hitler.
President Eisenhower; The silhouette of a hand pressing into a fence that is blocking the American flag.

The Shaky History of Mass Deportations

‘Operation Wetback’ and ‘Mexican Repatriation’ worked—until they didn’t.
Silhouettes of Energy Secretary Chris Wright, President Donald Trump, and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum in the Oval Office in the dark.

The Making of Emergencies

For centuries, theorists of liberal governance have worried about how emergencies can unfetter executive power. Trump has given those fears new urgency.
Mexican Americans in a detention camp.

A Nation of Imprisoned Immigrants

Jails have been foundational to immigration enforcement for over a century—and have always operated with a staggering absence of oversight and public awareness.
Photo of Galveston County Jail, 1929.

How Texas Jails Built Migrant Incarceration

Following a 1925 investigation, immigrant detention in the Galveston County Jail was declared “a crime against humanity.”
A drawing of two parents and a child running at a border, their silhouettes being sliced by a chainlink fence.

The Crime of Human Movement

Two recent books about our immigration system reveal its long history of exploiting vulnerable individuals for financial gain.
Sheriff Joe Arpaio riding in the back of a convertible car painted like an American flag.

Are Sheriffs Above the Law?

Many vignettes of sheriffs in action are dramatic and alarming. But how representative are they?
A U.S. Border Patrol vehicle in front of a section of the U.S.-Mexico border fence near Ocotillo, Calif., on Sept. 13.
partner

The Myth of ‘Open Borders’

Even before the United States regulated migration, states did. Here’s why.
Migrants in line for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, barbed wire in the foreground.
partner

Biden’s Border Policies Target Haitians. That’s No Accident.

The long history undergirding our harsh bipartisan migration policies.

Filter Results:

Suggested Filters:

Idea