Abstract
In this compelling and timely book, Maya Pagni Barak makes the case for a radical rethinking of procedural justice — the fairness of a given process — within the context of immigration and the need to work towards substantive justice. For The Slow Violence of Immigration Court, Barak draws primarily on data from interviews with seventeen immigration attorneys and twenty Central American immigrants who had experience with deportation proceedings, aiming to understand how both immigrants and attorneys perceive the overall fairness of immigration court and the immigration system writ large. Poignantly grounded in immigrants’ stories and experiences, the book is composed of an introduction, six chapters, a conclusion, and an epilogue. Barak begins by noting a surprising finding: that the immigrants she interviewed perceived their deportation proceedings to be fair and legitimate, often claiming they felt listened to and treated with respect. Traditional literature on procedural justice, Barak explains, posits that people who positively evaluate procedural fairness tend to accept and comply with the outcome of that process. However, despite assessing their deportation proceedings to be a fair and legitimate process, the immigrants Barak interviewed rejected the outcome — a deportation order — as unfair. None of the immigrants Barak interviewed accepted a deportation order, nor did they comply or intend to comply with it.
In analyzing these findings, Barak develops the concept of “immigrant legal consciousness” across several body chapters. She outlines how immigrants “piece together a patchwork of legal knowledge from both official and unofficial sources in the United States and abroad” (p. 64), including attorneys, notarios, friends and family, media, and past experiences. As Barak illustrates, immigrant legal consciousness is informed by myriad factors, including the sociopolitical histories of Central American migration to the United States which, in turn, shape immigrants’ (low) expectations and (positive) evaluations of US immigration proceedings. This uniquely “immigrant” legal consciousness stands in contrast to the evaluations of immigration attorneys who reported numerous procedural injustices within immigration court. Writing against a “one-size-fits-all-approach” in much theorizing on procedural justice, Barak's close attention to the role of culture, identity, and history in shaping perceptions of justice is a valuable contribution to legal and immigration studies.
If not assessments of procedural injustice or perceptions of illegitimacy, what then accounts for immigrants’ defiance of US immigration law? Barak focuses on this question in the book's later chapters. Ultimately, she concludes that immigrants’ rejection of deportation orders rests on issues of ethics and morality. The immigrants Barak interviewed identified deportation as profoundly unjust not only because it was so often equated with a death sentence but also because there exists very little, if any, viable options for legalization that would allow them the opportunity to live and work in the United States. For her research participants, (lack of) compliance with US immigration law was not a question of procedural justice but rather “rests upon the substantive (un)fairness of deportation and the (im)morality of the immigration system” (p. 122).
Fair process, Barak argues, does not mean that either the outcome or the system itself is fair. One of the key theoretical interventions of the book is the case Barak makes for substantive justice. Barak does not just reject procedural reforms and rights-based mobilization as ineffective or unenforceable in the context of immigration. Rather, she argues convincingly that procedural reforms may also mask (and allow the reproduction of) broader inequalities and injustices within the US immigration system. That procedural immigration reforms will never result in justice or meaningful change amidst a system that governs through the violence of deportation, detention, and family separation is an urgent and powerful message of this book.
In ending the conclusion, Barak claims that abolitionist frameworks offer the most promise, stressing the need to dismantle the current US immigration system; provide pathways for legalization; and eliminate detention, deportation, and the need for immigration court altogether. I did find myself wishing Barak would have developed this abolitionist vision a bit more or put her suggestions into dialogue with current detention or border abolitionist scholarship. Yet Barak has led us to see such dismantling as the necessary work ahead and this itself is a vital intervention.
The Slow Violence of Immigration Court, with its unique focus on procedural justice, is an essential contribution to the growing body of work that exposes immigration regimes as sites of everyday violence — a literature that Barak, however, could have more actively engaged in the book. Beyond the important substantive findings and arguments of the book, Barak's centering of immigrants’ narratives and epistemologies as sites of critique and knowledge production is especially noteworthy. Well-written and cogently structured, this book deserves wide readership. It would also be an ideal teaching text for undergraduate or graduate courses within im/migration studies or sociolegal studies, particularly given how deftly Barak handles theoretical concepts, offering clear explanations grounded in her narrative data. Barak's thoughtful, nuanced critique of procedural justice within the context of immigration would also be immensely valuable to immigration attorneys, officials, and advocates. Finally, I hope that this book finds its way into the hands of policy makers who may heed this book's urging to confront the violence of the US immigration system and think radically about solutions for change.