Rethinking Pre-removal Immigration Detention in the United States: Lessons from Europe and Proposals for Reform

In this article for Refugee Survey Quarterly, Christina Fialho, a former research intern at the Global Detention Project and founder of the California-based Community Initiatives for Visiting Immigrants in Confinement (CIVIC), examines the legality of lengthy detention of non-citizens held in pre-removal immigration detention in the United States, while presenting a comparative analysis of the European Union and […]

Read More…

Who Must Be Detained? Proportionality as a Tool for Critiquing Immigration Detention Policy

The article for Refugee Survey Quarterly endeavours to use the legal principle of proportionality as a tool to critique immigration detention practices and policies. To this end, the article proposes a methodology for assessing operations at detention centres that opens the phenomenon up to empirical study and allows for comparative research of detention practices across […]

Read More…

On its border, new problems: EU efforts to externalise migration controls

In the early 2000s, after Spain shut down the migration route through its enclaves on Morocco’s Mediterranean coast, Melilla and Ceuta, desperate refugees and migrants began targeting Spain’s Canary Islands, off the West Coast of Africa, using Mauritania as their new launching point. Spain responded by boosting naval patrols off the coast and building a […]

Read More…

The Elastic Frontier

Concurrent with high-profile border control efforts, the United States has been busy quietly formulating and putting in place a strategy aimed at pushing migrant interdiction, detention, and deterrence into neighboring countries. These beyond-the-border efforts have led some observers to describe what they see as the southward migration of the U.S.-Mexico border, or to call the […]

Read More…

Searching for Safe Haven

Most of the world’s up-rooted are migrants—people who have left their countries in search of food, better living conditions, jobs, or to be with family members. Who deserves protection? What responsibilities should governments and the international community shoulder? How can refugee protection efforts be fine-tuned? What is the price we pay for not coming to […]

Read More…

Iraqi Kurdish Refugees, Gukarca, Pakistan (UNHCR 2000)