Open PDF in Browser: Hiroshi Motomura,* Borders and Belonging: Keynote Address at the 2025 Ira C. Rothgerber Jr. Conference on Immigration & National Borders
Introduction
I appreciate the opportunity to be here today for many reasons, both personal and professional. The law school here at the University of Colorado is the place where I became a law professor, so being here brings to mind fond memories and deep emotions. I was here on the CU Law faculty for twenty‑one years; those years shaped who I became and who I remain today.
Those years bear the influence of many people who helped the law school and helped me. I have especially warm recollections of Ira Rothgerber’s impact on CU Law. When I was here, Ira was very much a presence whose commitment and generosity propelled many of the law school’s scholarly events. The Byron White Center and this lecture series directly reflect his successful efforts to make sure that CU Law has nationwide influence.
And here in Boulder is where I became a teacher and scholar of immigration law. That, too, reflects the influence of many relationships. CU was where I started in academia, having been hired to teach Civil Procedure, Comparative Law, and International Business Transactions. I thoroughly enjoyed that part of my career, and much of what I learned as a teacher and scholar in those fields has shaped my teaching and scholarship ever since.
But not long after getting tenure here in 1987, I had a conversation with my dean, Gene Nichol. We had lunch together one day, across the street from the law school in what was then The Cheese Shop, now Subway sandwiches. I asked him if it would be crazy for me to shift my scholarship—which had focused on civil procedure and evidence—to immigration law, which I’d taught for several years up to that point. I expected him to tell me to stay in my lane, but he opened a big door when he encouraged me to write what I wanted to write. Though my goals as a scholar were only starting to form, they combined an appreciation of law’s doctrinal and technical sides with a sensitivity to history, theory, and policy. In retrospect, what Nick said to free me up to pursue these goals in immigration law was so obviously right, but at that moment his encouragement was absolutely pivotal—a key moment in my career.
One more thing before I get into substance. I’ll focus here on my new book, Borders and Belonging: Toward a Fair Immigration Policy.[1] My purpose in this keynote is to highlight how the book suggests a framework for thinking about immigration and citizenship at this moment in national and world history. But I’ll start with something that should be clear from the Acknowledgments at the front of the book. I wrote, “When your acknowledgments cover several pages, you know you’ve had a lot of help. This book reflects the thought, care, and work of many people and many communities.”[2]
This is so true. I owe much to so many people who helped me write this book. It reflects many conversations over the years. Some were about drafts, some about the issues, and some about why we write and how we go about it. Many of those conversations were with friends and colleagues who are here today. I especially want to thank one of them: my friend and coauthor Alex Aleinikoff. He helped me see the urgent need to teach and write about immigration and citizenship at a time when few law professors did so.
About Borders and Belonging
This background is more than just personal preface. I hope that it also allows my talk today to be a “keynote” in the classic sense—the note at the start of a concert that sets the key for playing or singing the piece. My purpose isn’t to summarize what the book says. Instead, I want to lay a foundation and analytical framework for today’s discussions. At the same time, I am eager to hear from the other speakers and everyone else about alternative ways to map the issues. I want to hear what I may have missed or gotten wrong.
First, I’ll begin with a word about immigration and citizenship issues in the year 2025. It is a very difficult time for immigrants, for immigrant communities, for the country, and for the world. The current Trump Administration has acted in many ways that have created immediate urgencies and caused much harm and suffering. An incomplete list of examples would include deportations without due process,[3] stops based on profiling by racial appearance or accent,[4] and ending several types of protection for vulnerable migrants fleeing for their lives.[5] This harm has happened in immigration, but not only in immigration.
More fundamentally, the treatment of immigration and immigrants has established patterns and practices that the Administration has applied to settings that don’t involve immigration or immigrants at all. For example, in the summer of 2025, the Administration deployed National Guard troops to Los Angeles for immigration enforcement, then deployed the National Guard to Washington, D.C., for crime control.[6] In my view, this domestic use of the military—to respond to what the Administration has cast as extraordinary circumstances—is putting democracy and the rule of law in peril.
This context has sometimes led me to think that the publication of this book came at the wrong time. Some readers might think that the book is too distant from the pain that many people, communities, and institutions are feeling each day, each week, each month, and each year. Some of these readers might even think that the book is tone‑deaf when it speaks in broad terms about ideas and ways to think about immigration policy.
And yet, I think that this book comes at exactly the right time. It’s more urgent than ever to chart a path forward, to revisit and rethink familiar ideas, to question familiar assumptions, and to find new angles to approach immigration law and policy questions that are central to debates in 2025 and likely to remain so in coming years. Immigration and immigrants are under severe attack today. Also under attack are U.S. citizens who are part of these immigrant families and communities.
Why is this happening now? What animates these attacks? What can be done about it, not just now, but in generations to come? It may take time, perhaps measured more in decades than in years. It is no accident that I dedicated this book to my grandchildren.[7] But it is well past the time when we need to shape immigration for the coming generations by moving forward in the ways that the book maps out.
The coverage of the book reflects a lifelong journey in the following sense: Each of my three books has tried to deal with what my previous work had not addressed or had even avoided. My first book, Americans in Waiting, explored how this country has treated newcomers—sometimes well, and sometimes badly.[8] But that book didn’t deal with undocumented immigrations.
So my next book, Immigration Outside the Law, was all about undocumented immigrants.[9] And yet, that book left much unsaid, both about the broader context for migration worldwide and how undocumented immigration reflects other problems of domestic and foreign policy.
Borders and Belonging engages with that broader context.[10] It’s a short book, but it has been a very daunting project. Of all of my books, it’s the most ambitious and the riskiest. I introduce a lot of new ideas, even as I avoid the jargon that might make those ideas seem more sophisticated to some readers. This book is very plainspoken, reflecting my effort to reach a broad audience and not obscure the message with jargon. It may not be a book that would get me tenure. But it’s the book that I got tenure to write.
The Broader Context for Immigration Policy
Now I’ll provide a few words about that broader context. Each of us who writes about immigration and citizenship becomes invested in what we know. Many of us become “experts” about a part of migration, or perhaps even a few parts of this broad field. But specialization leaves us less open to different perspectives. As an example, many lawyers tend to see issues as problems of law that ought to be amenable to solutions in law. Within law, refugee scholars separate themselves from immigration scholars. Lawyers often separate themselves from social scientists. And economists, philosophers, and anthropologists talk to each other less than they should.
Experts don’t talk enough to people with lived experience. But many people who write about their experiences can be blind to the perspectives of others. And political silos confine us when we talk only to the like‑minded and come to share their assumptions. Geographic silos also hamper communication. In the United States, for instance, many people are unfamiliar with similar debates around the world. This insularity inhibits learning from comparative and historical perspectives.
I wrote this book to break down these silos. But this challenge is a daunting one. Sometimes I feel like an athlete who has competed for years in the pole vault but then signs up for the decathlon, which will mean the long jump and the hundred‑meter dash. Though I haven’t become a true expert in every area that I address, I think I know enough to make the cross‑topic connections that define any promising path toward a fair immigration policy. I can instigate conversations that are cross‑disciplinary or transnational, or perhaps both.
I’ve built the book around ten questions. All reflect a natural and broadly shared curiosity about some aspect of immigration. The first question is “Why National Borders, and Why Not?” [11] Another question is how we think about time and migration, and, in particular, what it means to migrate temporarily or permanently.[12] Later in the book, a chapter tries to answer the question, “What Does It Mean to Address the Root Causes of Migration?”[13] The last chapter consolidates lessons from earlier chapters on several topics. These topics include the harms that national borders can enable and conceal, as well as the use of history in the making of immigration law and policy.[14] There are other questions like these in scope and spirit, ten questions in all.
Now I’d like to share a few of the book’s key ideas. I’ll focus on five topics that seem especially crucial in the year 2025 and in the second Trump Administration. They include exploring whether there is an immigration “crisis,” understanding what immigration law does, the significance of “sanctuary” cities, whether immigrants’ rights are civil rights or human rights, and the future of humanitarian protection. I completed work on the book before the 2024 presidential election in the United States, but the book’s use of these concepts and the framework that they suggest have continued to have analytical power in explaining the immigration news cycle in 2025.
Is There an “Immigration Crisis”?
One foundational aspect of the book is how it unpacks the concept of an immigration “crisis.”[15] This terminology runs several risks. One risk is that it suggests the need for a rapid response and quick solution. This suggests a deeper problem with the phrase “immigration crisis.” The word assumes a premise: that immigration is a problem. That premise prompts a question: Is the problem a big problem or a small one?
This approach frames the challenge as damage control, or in other words, how to reduce the magnitude of a problem. And so, the question becomes: Do we need a thirty‑foot wall, or is a ten‑foot wall enough? And another: How much due process can we afford to have? These questions come naturally from debating whether the word “crisis” fits. The debate quickly moves to how badly immigration threatens people who are already here. It’s assumed to be a zero‑sum game, with newcomers competing for limited jobs, limited resources, and limited space.
The problem with this approach is that it unthinkingly rejects a different perspective: that immigration is a source of prosperity. The consensus among economists, for example, is that immigration boosts the national economy as a whole. This fact tends to overlook that immigration can also produce winners and losers, and those consequences matter politically and culturally. That challenge explains why the real question isn’t how to manage a problem or a crisis, but rather how to share the prosperity that immigration brings.[16]
What Does Immigration Law Do?
Also foundational in the book is asking what immigration law does.[17] According to one view, immigration law translates the physical border into legal principles, with an administrative structure to apply them. So viewed, the purpose of immigration law is to protect “us” on the inside from “them” on the outside.[18] Immigration law becomes a protective wall. This is the immigration‑law‑as‑physical‑border view that presidential candidate Trump already advanced back in 2015, when he started to pursue the presidency.[19] The message, in a nutshell, was that immigration threatened Americans, and that as president he would protect “us.”
From there, it was just a short step from calling immigrants “outsiders” to calling immigrants “invaders.” It’s no accident that the word “invasion” appears repeatedly in Trump’s executive orders on immigration since his inauguration on January 20, 2025.[20] Just as “crisis” is a word that narrows the debate in profound and subtle ways, the Trump view of immigration law does similar work: It channels discussion by asking, “How bad is the invasion?” and “How do we fight back?”
In the year 2025, characterizing immigrants as invaders has insidious effects. One subtle but real effect has been to separate the population of the United States into two groups. One group consists of people who have distant connections—or possibly no connections at all—with people outside the country. In the other group are people who have close connections with people outside the country. These connections may be ones with family, with employers who want to hire newcomers, or with educational institutions that want to enroll and graduate international students.
The invasion narrative privileges the first group with few connections to people outside the country, while silencing the voices of people in the second group: those who have close connections with people outside the country. Those in the second group who find their stakes in America devalued in this way include citizens, lawful permanent residents, or others with a claim to belong.
The book explains why those who belong should include many undocumented people who have become part of communities in the United States.[21] This silenced group also includes employers who want to hire workers even if they lack work authorization, consumers who benefit from the goods and services that undocumented people provide, and colleges and universities who rely on undocumented students for creativity and talent. These are all people and entities who benefit directly from immigration, including undocumented immigration, both now and in the future.
The key point is that immigration law isn’t just a way to separate “us” on the inside from “them” on the outside. Instead, immigration law can also privilege some of us over others of us. This pattern—of characterizing immigration law as the legal version of a border wall—shows immigration law at its worst: when borders conceal or normalize injustice.[22]
Immigration law and borders can make exclusion at the border and deportation from inside the country seem like inevitable aspects of national sovereignty. This is all the more unjust because the system of lawful admission pathways to the United States is so restrictive as to be deeply flawed. It shunts many migrants, particularly from developing countries, into a precarious immigration status or none at all.[23]
To put it in more general terms, we might not allow discrimination against some of us when it is a matter of laws and practices inside the United States. But when similar discrimination is a consequence of border regulation, it can be easy to accept and normalize that discrimination. In short, disrespect can all too easily become normal or invisible when it happens in immigration law. For example, the U.S. Supreme Court has allowed discrimination without serious examination when it happens in the form of immigration law directed against majority‑Muslim countries in the name of national security.[24]
Another example arose in 2025 in the form of the Trump Administration’s attempt to reinterpret the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. By executive order, the Administration sought to exclude from birthright citizenship anyone born on U.S. soil who does not have at least one citizen or lawful permanent resident parent.[25] This was an attempt to silence the voices of many citizens by saying they aren’t citizens at all, and that they are in the United States only because of an invasion by undocumented parents or because of a temporary lawful stay that gives rise to belonging claims.
“Sanctuary” Cities
Identifying what immigration law does is key to deciding if immigration law is a matter of barring or admitting outsiders, or instead a matter of building a community inside the country. The issues have come into sharp relief in controversies in 2025 about so‑called “sanctuary” cities, with the federal administration and local governments taking diametrically opposed views.[26] If immigration law erects barriers to entry, then it might seem natural to implement these barriers not just at the physical border but also throughout the country. According to the view of immigration law as a border wall, it might seem natural for enforcement in cities in the U.S. interior to operate with only the limited constitutional constraints that apply at or near the physical border.[27]
If, however, the main function of immigration law is to define communities in the country, there is a heightened need to ensure that enforcement does not engage in stops and arrests without reasonable suspicion of unlawful presence. Equally essential—if immigration law defines communities—is avoiding enforcement that is based in whole or in part on perceived race, ethnicity, language, or religion. Especially unacceptable are masked enforcement officers and enforcement practices that amount to disappearing arrestees into an opaque detention system.[28] Immigration raids have reflected the widespread use of arrests based on race, accent, language, and workplace, and without reasonable suspicion that an individual lacks lawful immigration status.[29]
Are Immigrants’ Rights Civil Rights or Human Rights?
What I’ve outlined so far leads logically to another idea in the book—that persuasive claims to reform immigration laws are some combination of what the book calls humanity claims and belonging claims.[30] In some legal cultures, the language for humanity claims might be human rights, and the language of belonging claims might be civil or constitutional rights.
Humanity claims are ways to challenge treatment that no human being should have to endure. Belonging claims are ways to challenge treatment that reflects disrespect for people who are part of communities inside the country. Much of the U.S. perspective on immigrants’ rights emphasizes belonging claims. In much of the rest of the world, efforts to assert immigrants’ rights tend to emphasize human rights to a degree seldom heard in the United States.
This contrast has historical roots. In the United States, much of the immigrants’ rights movement has cast noncitizens, including the undocumented, as insiders who belong and therefore have persuasive claims to equal treatment, due process, and the rule of law. So viewed, immigrants’ rights are a matter of civil rights, often with a constitutional foundation.[31]
The immigrants’ rights movement’s reliance on civil rights concepts and arguments lost traction in the 2010s. This was when the immigration controversies in the news had less to do with the undocumented inside the United States and instead focused on large groups of migrants traveling north through Mexico to the U.S. southern border. This shifted emphasis to thinking about how to treat people as human beings even if they had no prior contact with a country, not as residents who belong to communities inside it. This shift caught the immigrants’ rights movement in the United States flat‑footed. It became difficult to adapt belonging claims and civil rights to people who had relatively thin connections to the United States, and whose claims often have more traction as humanity claims.
What the situation required—and continues to require—is a coherent framework based on much greater awareness of the distinction and relationship between humanity claims (or human rights) and belonging claims (or civil and constitutional rights). In some situations, both types of arguments may have persuasive value. The prolonged detention of noncitizens can disrespect both a claim that no human being should have to endure incarceration except after a criminal judgment and a claim that detention disrespects a noncitizen’s connections in the United States. Both types of claims can matter, but differently in different situations. This way of understanding immigration policy is crucial to both conceptual clarity and advocacy.
The Future of Humanitarian Protection
Another key issue is how we should think about humanitarian protection.[32] The prevailing view, adopted into U.S. immigration law,[33] is centered around individual asylum, or, in other words, the government granting or denying asylum on a case‑by‑case basis for an individual or a family. But it would be consistent with much historical practice to think more broadly about protection by considering several dimensions that a comprehensive approach to forced migration should consider blending.
One question is whether asylum—which typically comes with a routine transition to lawful permanent resident status and then a path to citizenship[34]—should play as large a role as it plays today. Should there be a bigger role for other forms of protection—such as refugee admissions, Temporary Protected Status (TPS), and parole—that are now relegated to the sidelines? A related question is to ask: Why are decisions to grant or deny protection made individually as with asylum, when many facts relate to a large group of people from the same country as with designation for TPS?
Also, what does it mean to have “capacity” to take in people? Here, the role of private sponsorship—allowing individuals and companies inside the United States to provide some combination of financial support, employment, or other resettlement or integration assistance—may be significant by fostering the integration of newcomers and their children.
Other questions about humanitarian protection include: Why is forced migration starkly separated from labor migration or family migration? After all, refugees typically work, and they have families. Could we reframe the discussion to view migrants more holistically? This shift seems especially appropriate because sound policy toward forced migration must consider the children and grandchildren of the first generation that gets protection.
Another question with profound implications for humanitarian protection is this: How is humanitarian protection tied to addressing the root causes of migration? If the practical political reality of humanitarian protection is that some protection should facilitate a free choice to return to the country of origin once dire circumstances pass, how might governments work to make sure that migration isn’t forced in the first place, or make sure that return is by choice and not by compulsion?
A Few More Ideas
The book articulates and weaves together many ideas like those I have explained here. In addition to those five topics, here are few more that I will explain in very brief overview, just to convey a sense of the book’s overall scope, approach, and ambition. These topics are: how to think about time in making immigration policy, how and why to take immigration skeptics seriously, what it means to address the root causes of migration, and how history should influence immigration law and policy today.
First, how should we think about time in making immigration policy?[35] The conventional view separates temporary migration from permanent (or indefinite) migration. The book explains, however, that both the people who make law and policy and migrants themselves have good reasons to defer a decision on whether a migrant’s stay in a new country will be temporary or indefinite. It is not only natural, but also reflects some worthwhile goals of immigration policy, for some temporary migrants to stay.
A second theme is how and why to take immigration skeptics seriously.[36] Much of the immigrants’ rights movement has written off skeptics as either disregarding immigration’s positive effects or reflecting racism. But neglecting millions of skeptics who feel left behind by an economy and society changed by immigration creates fertile ground for demagogues. This perception of neglect—combined with the “immigration as invasion” narrative—was a major factor in the presidential election of 2024 and in immigration policy in 2025.
Third, the book explores this question: What does it mean to address the root causes of migration?[37] Some politicians and policymakers talk about addressing the root causes, but it’s crucial to go further and think carefully about what this means. It’s important to acknowledge research that shows that development aid increases migration, at least in the short run. But a shift to nation‑building with a longer time horizon is much more likely to achieve a sustainable immigration equilibrium in the long term. This perspective contrasts with the track record of development aid in many situations—this aid can quickly become outsourced border control.
Finally, a fourth additional idea merits mention: It’s essential to consider how history should influence immigration law and policy today.[38] The conventional wisdom is that it should, but this sort of quick answer masks significant complexity. The book explains a spectrum of historical relevance. At one end are immediate effects. Examples include policies to protect people connected with the U.S. government in Afghanistan who may face harm at the hands of the new government there. More attenuated, yet important, is legalization for undocumented immigrants based on long‑standing U.S. policy to tolerate or even invite undocumented labor.[39] Further on the spectrum is the view that immigration policy should serve as a site of reparations for imperialism and capitalism. Choosing to take history into account at spots along this spectrum poses a hard set of questions, but it’s essential to have a clear‑minded conversation about the relevance of history for immigration policy.
Concluding Thoughts
The question of history’s relevance brings me to two concluding thoughts. First, we don’t have these conversations often enough. We’re talking too much to ourselves, often limited by horizons that reflect specialization or politics. Second, we need to search for the best balance between the ideal and the realistic—some sense of “realistic utopia.”[40] This approach recognizes that moving toward a fair immigration policy occurs through a combination of small steps, but moving in this direction requires a coherent sense of what that fair policy would be and what would make it fair.
It’s essential to be realistic about what is possible, for that realism is the foundation for taking steps in the right direction through everyday decision‑making. This is true even if the best thing to work for is to minimize backsliding. But realism matters little—and can even be deflating and destructive—without a sense of what we want.[41] Utopia is an idea, a direction of travel. This journey demands a sense of goals, which in turn requires a framework for choices. This framework requires clarity about humanity claims and belonging claims, about the relevance of time, about the voices being silenced and amplified, about the relevance of history, and about the many other things that I explore in Borders and Belonging. It’s impossible to reach utopia overnight, but it’s essential to know what it looks like.
Thank you for your attention and for being here today. I’m eager to take part in our discussions today.
* Susan Westerberg Prager Distinguished Professor of Law and Faculty Co Director, Center for Immigration Law and Policy, UCLA School of Law.
- See generally Hiroshi Motomura, Borders and Belonging: Toward a Fair Immigration Policy (2025). ↑
- Id. at x–xiii. ↑
- See Invocation of the Alien Enemies Act Regarding the Invasion of the United States by Tren de Aragua, Proclamation No. 10903, 90 Fed. Reg. 13033 (Mar. 14, 2025). ↑
- See Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo, 146 S. Ct. 1, 14 (2025) (Sotomayor, J., dissenting). ↑
- See Realigning the United States Refugee Admissions Program, Exec. Order No. 14,163, 90 Fed. Reg. 8459 (Jan. 20, 2025); Guaranteeing the States Protection Against Invasion, Proclamation No. 10888, 90 Fed. Reg. 8333 (Jan. 20, 2025) (closing the southern border to asylum seekers among others). ↑
- Compare Memorandum on Department of Defense Security for the Protection of Department of Homeland Security Functions, DCPD-202500672 (June 7, 2025) (immigration enforcement), with Additional Measures to Address the Crime Emergency in the District of Columbia, Exec. Order No. 14,339, 90 Fed. Reg. 42121 (Aug. 25, 2025) (crime control). On deployment of the National Guard in Los Angeles, see Seema Mehta & Ian James, The Legal Issues Raised by Trump Sending the National Guard to L.A., L.A. Times (June 7, 2025, at 10:03 PM), https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-06-07/what-is-title-10-trump-homan-national-guard [https://perma.cc/TUL6-CS8J]. ↑
- Motomura, supra note 1, at dedication. ↑
- See generally Hiroshi Motomura, Americans in Waiting: The Lost Story of Immigration and Citizenship in the United States (2006). ↑
- See generally Hiroshi Motomura, Immigration Outside the Law (2014). ↑
- See generally Motomura, supra note 1. ↑
- Id. at 15–22. ↑
- Id. at 70–82. ↑
- Id. at 135–48. ↑
- Id. at 149–63. ↑
- Id. at 2–3. ↑
- Id. at 122–23. ↑
- Id. at 20–21. ↑
- For executive orders that reflect this view, see Protecting the American People Against Invasion, Exec. Order No. 14,159, 90 Fed. Reg. 8443 (Jan. 20, 2025); Guaranteeing the States Protection Against Invasion, Proclamation No. 10888, 90 Fed. Reg. 8333 (Jan. 20, 2025). ↑
- See Hiroshi Motomura, What Does Immigration Law Do?, Carnegie Endowment for Int’l Peace (May 5, 2025), https://carnegieendowment.org/posts/2025/05/what-does-immigration-law-do [https://perma.cc/RZ8S-M8BS] (discussing the emergence of the invasion narrative). ↑
- See, e.g., Protecting the American People Against Invasion, 90 Fed. Reg. at 8443. ↑
- See Motomura, supra note 1, at 47–49. ↑
- Id. at 18 (“Borders are the Achilles heel of a fair and just society.”). ↑
- Id. at 85–90. ↑
- See Trump v. Hawaii, 585 U.S. 667 (2018). ↑
- See Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship, Exec. Order 14,160, 90 Fed. Reg. 8449 (Jan. 29, 2025). ↑
- Compare Protecting the American People Against Invasion, Exec. Order No. 14,159, 90 Fed. Reg. 8443, 8446 (Jan. 20, 2025) (directing cutoffs of federal funds to “sanctuary” jurisdictions in section 17) and Memorandum on Department of Defense Security for the Protection of Department of Homeland Security Functions, DCPD-202500672 (June 7, 2025) (authorizing deployment of the National Guard), with Mayor Karen Bass, Exec. Directive No. 12, City of Los Angeles (July 11, 2025) (ordering measures in response to federal immigration enforcement in Los Angeles). For fuller discussion of “sanctuary” (including misgivings about the term), see generally Hiroshi Motomura, Arguing About Sanctuary, 52 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 435 (2018). ↑
- On broader latitude for federal enforcement at or near the borders of the United States, see generally United States v. Martinez‑Fuerte, 428 U.S. 543 (1976); United States v. Brignoni‑Ponce, 422 U.S. 873 (1975). ↑
- See, e.g., Friends of the Everglades v. Noem, 796 F. Supp. 3d 1234 (S.D. Fla. 2025), stayed sub nom., Friends of the Everglades, Inc. v. Sec’y of U.S. Dep’t of Homeland Sec., No. 25‑12873, 2025 WL 2598567 (11th Cir. Sep. 4, 2025) (challenging the opening and operation of a large, remote detention facility in Florida); Abrego Garcia v. Noem, No. 8:25‑CV‑00951‑PX, 2025 WL 2062203, at *9–10 (D. Md. July 23, 2025) (requiring the federal government to, among other things, provide seventy‑two business hours’ notice of intended removal to a third country). ↑
- At the time of this writing, the federal district court for the Central District of California had issued a stay of federal immigration enforcement in Los Angeles in 2025 that did not adhere to legal constraints on the use of appearance, language, accent, and workplace in enforcement decisions. The U.S. Supreme Court, without opinion on the “shadow docket,” stayed the district court order (superseding the Ninth Circuit’s order denying a stay) pending adjudication on the merits. See Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo, 146 S. Ct. 1 (2025), staying 148 F.4th 656 (9th Cir. 2025), denying stay in No. 25‑cv‑05605, 2025 WL 1915964 (C.D. Cal. July 11, 2025). ↑
- See Motomura, supra note 1, at 19–21. ↑
- Id. at 41–54. ↑
- Id. at 23–40. ↑
- See Immigration and Nationality Act § 208, 8 U.S.C. § 1158. ↑
- See id. § 1159. ↑
- Motomura, supra note 1, at 70–82. ↑
- Id. at 119–32. ↑
- Id. at 133–46. ↑
- Id. at 156–61. ↑
- Id. at 85–100. ↑
- Id. at 8–11. ↑
- Id. at 162–63. ↑