Abstract
Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia’s most recent book, Banned: Immigration Enforcement in the Time of Trump, provides a useful overview of the many changes wrought to U.S. immigration policy by the Trump administration, with a particular focus on the role of discretion. Wadhia devotes much of her prodigious professional energy to making the famously arcane discipline of immigration law comprehensible to the general public. Not surprisingly, this book is accessible to nonlawyers and nonexperts on immigration law. The first chapter, for example, is devoted to explaining the basics of immigration law and enforcement in the United States. Wadhia identifies the different agencies tasked with administering immigration law and explains what role each agency plays in the system.
The book’s focus is squarely on identifying and explaining the changes in the immigration system that have occurred during the Trump presidency. Wadhia devotes a chapter each to some of the highest profile changes initiated by the Trump administration, as well as some procedural changes that have been a focus of immigration lawyers but perhaps less well publicized in the general press. In the former category are three chapters on the various incarnations of the “Muslim Ban,” the efforts to end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), and the administration’s hostility toward refugees and asylum seekers. The chapter on the Muslim Ban details the extensive litigation surrounding the ban, while the chapter on refugees and asylees explains the history of these programs in the United States, and identifies key changes made by the Trump administration in the treatment of asylum seekers and refugees, including its embrace of family separation. The chapter on DACA seeks to situate DACA within the context of other programs that give immigrants a contingent status in the United States, most notably Temporary Protected Status.
The book’s other two chapters focus on issues that have been deep frustrations for immigration attorneys and advocates. Wadhia devotes a chapter to the Trump administration’s changes in enforcement priorities, observing that in essence “everyone is a priority” under these new priorities. Wadhia persuasively argues that because it is simply impossible to deport everyone who may be eligible for removal, the actual result of the “no priority” policy is that discretion is devolved down to the level of individual Immigration and Customs Enforcement or Customs and Border Protection agents. Wadhia also identifies the troubling trend of blurring the lines between immigration benefits and immigration enforcement, highlighting the “chilling effect” this kind of blurring may have on an individual’s willingness to seek an immigration status for which they are eligible (51).
Another chapter addresses the procedural aspects of removal, focusing on what Wadhia calls “speedy deportations” that do not take place in front of an immigration judge and are pursued with minimal procedural protections for immigrants (79). Speedy deportations have been a complaint of immigration attorneys and advocates for years, and many of these problems pre-date the Trump administration. Wadhia argues, however, that the Trump administration has embraced a clear preference for this approach to removal that is different from prior administrations.
Wadhia concludes the book with a chapter on recommended reforms. The suggested reforms run the gamut, from a call for independent immigration courts to advocacy for a path to legalization for long-term residents. The suggested reforms are not new ones, but their almost common-sense status among immigration attorneys and advocates is itself reflective of the broad consensus underlying some of these fundamental proposals for reform.
Changes within the U.S. immigration system have occurred so rapidly and relentlessly since January 2017 that one may be forgiven for having lost track of what happened and when it happened. Wadhia has memorialized these changes in one volume that imposes some conceptual organization upon a very messy few years of immigration administration. She is most forceful when addressing issues related to discretion, which was the topic of her most recent book (Beyond Deportation: The Role of Prosecutorial Discretion in Immigration Cases). She argues, for example, that “[t]argeting everyone for immigration enforcement is untenable as a practical matter, unsuitable as a matter of law, and unconscionable when conducted abruptly and without regard to a person’s equities in the United States” (53). Banned is an excellent book for a general audience reader hoping to gain a quick understanding of immigration changes under Trump, as well as for a reader more familiar with immigration law who will appreciate seeing the major currents organized and described so deftly in a short space.