Immigration Article of the Day: Researching From A Deportation Abolition Ethic by Laila L. Hlass and Rachel L. Davidson

Researching From A Deportation Abolition Ethic by Laila L. Hlass and Rachel L. Davidson, 105 Boston University Law Review 1511 (2025)

Abstract

As a growing number of legal scholars have critiqued the carceral immigration system and defined deportation abolition, some have begun to engage in movement law as a methodology in that work.  This entails collaborating with community groups, workers’ collectives, and immigrant movements to cogenerate ideas and theory, which are formalized into a variety of expressions, including legal scholarship. Deportation abolition is both an area of research and a praxis seeking to shrink the footprint of immigrant policing and detention. Lawyers practicing a deportation abolition ethic “by following an antiracist orientation, building community power, and insisting on structural change and non-reformist reforms . . . mitigate daily harms in the immigration legal system while also holding broader visions to dismantle immigration enforcement and detention.” Similarly, scholars can research with a deportation abolition ethic by locating partners resisting the carceral state, engaging in conversations grounded in perspectives from impacted people, broadening epistemes, and ultimately writing in solidarity with and with accountability from movement collaborators.  

To explore the concept of researching from a deportation abolition ethic, the Essay uses the case study of the co-authors’ joint research project related to the End SIJS Backlog Coalition. The Coalition seeks to center the voices and experiences of immigrant youth eligible for the humanitarian SIJS protection who are impacted by visa shortages and susceptible to the immigration enforcement regime. The co-authors' research project has exposed immigration agency action and inaction that harms special immigrant juveniles, supported immigrant youth power-building, and ultimately through transparency work has discredited the legitimacy of the immigration enforcement regime. Ultimately, this Essay urges immigration scholars to play their part in dismantling the racist immigration carceral state and to cogenerate ideas with deportation abolition movements in their research, moving toward the horizon of a society grounded in liberation, mutual care, and justice.