Asylum Seekers Archives - Public Seminar

Migration

Asylum and the Hierarchy of Suffering

Limitations of the US migration framework

February 27, 2025 • by Charlotte Soehner and Olivia Woldemikael

Even before Trump barred asylum seekers from the US-Mexico border by declaring all unauthorized border crossings to be “invasions,” American asylum was a system with no winners. Now, while migrants at the border are stripped of the meager options they previously had recourse to, it’s crucial to understand what it meant, until very ...

Migration

On Refugees and Innocence

January 16, 2020 • by Miriam Ticktin

Innocence is now the key qualifier for someone who claims to be a refugee. Paradoxically, as part of this moralized regime, innocence is also claimed by those who grant asylum. The qualification that refugees must be seen as innocent can change their fate at different points. Those requesting asylum may ...

Migration

Remote Control of Asylum Seekers

How States Evade their Protection Obligation

December 17, 2019 • by David Scott FitzGerald

Zolberg observed that regulating migration at the port of embarkation abroad “is now so familiar that we tend to underestimate its radically innovative character and its fundamental importance in regulating world-wide movement.” In Refuge Beyond Reach: How Rich Democracies Repel Asylum Seekers, I show how modern remote control has become a ...

Migration

Grassroots Asylum

Escaping the Statist Paradigm

December 17, 2019 • by Simon Behrman

Because the asylum framework is constructed upon such subjective criteria, and is administered by states themselves, the decisions about who receives protection are stuck within a statist paradigm. Asylum is conceived of as a gift of the state, over which the state has discretion in how requests are considered. And ...

Migration

Trump’s War on Asylum

November 13, 2019 • by T. Alexander Aleinikoff

In the summer of 2019, the Administration put in place a policy that denies asylum to any person who has traveled through another country and failed to request asylum in the transit state. It has announced a reduction of refugee admissions to 18,000, a more than 80% cut from the ...

Feature

A Regional Approach for Central American Asylum Seekers

The U.S. should pursue a policy that strengthens ties with neighbors

June 11, 2019 • by T. Alexander Aleinikoff

The White House leaked documents to the Washington Post yesterdaytrying to show that Mexico has in fact agreed to a significant crackdown on its southern border and that Trump remains ready to impose the tariffs, or insist on the safe third country agreement, if the numbers at the U.S. border do not decline ...

Feature

Tempest Tossed

‘César’s Choice’: The conditions and decisions facing reunited immigrant families–a conversation with Prof. Lauren Gilbert

August 24, 2018 • by T. Alexander Aleinikoff

Alex Aleinikoff speaks with St.Thomas University of Law, Professor Lauren Gilbert, on the detention of re-united immigrant families and the difficult choices they face: should they return to their home countries together, should the parent return and child stay in the U.S., or should the family remain in ICE detention to pursue ...

Feature

Tempest Tossed

Separated Children, Zero tolerance and the Border, with Denise Gilman

July 27, 2018 • by T. Alexander Aleinikoff

Alex Aleinikoff, speaks with Professor Denise Gilman, Director of the Immigration Clinic at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law, about separated children, zero tolerance, and the border.