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Books > Law > Laws of other jurisdictions & general law > Constitutional & administrative law > Citizenship & nationality law > Immigration law
Refugee displacement is a global phenomenon that has uprooted
millions of individuals over the past century. In the 1980s,
repatriation became the preferred option for resolving the refugee
crisis. As human rights achieved global eminence, refugees' right
of return fell under its umbrella. Yet return as a right and its
practice as a rite created a radical disconnect between principle
and everyday practice, and the repatriation of refugees and
Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) remains elusive in cases of
forced displacement of victims by ethnic conflict.
Reviewing cases of ethnic displacement throughout the twentieth
century in Europe, Asia, and Africa, Howard Adelman and Elazar
Barkan juxtapose the empirical lack of repatriation in cases of
ethnic conflict, unless accompanied by coercion. The emphasis on
repatriation during the last several decades has obscured other
options, leaving refugees to spend years warehoused in camps.
Repatriation takes place when identity, defined by ethnicity or
religion, is not at the center of the displacing conflict, or when
the ethnic group to which the refugees belong are not a minority in
their original country or in the region to which they want to
return. Rather than perpetuate a ritual belief in return as a right
without the prospect of realization, Adelman and Barkan call for
solutions that bracket return as a primary focus in cases of ethnic
conflict.
"I worked in a trailer that ICE had set aside for conversations
between the women and the attorneys. While we talked, their
children, most of whom seemed to be between three and eight years
old, played with a few toys on the floor. It was hard for me to get
my head around the idea of a jail full of toddlers, but there they
were." For decades, advocates for refugee children and families
have fought to end the U.S. government's practice of jailing
children and families for months, or even years, until overburdened
immigration courts could rule on their claims for asylum. Baby
Jails is the history of that legal and political struggle. Philip
G. Schrag, the director of Georgetown University's asylum law
clinic, takes readers through thirty years of conflict over which
refugee advocates resisted the detention of migrant children. The
saga began during the Reagan administration when 15-year-old Jenny
Lisette Flores languished in a Los Angeles motel that the
government had turned into a makeshift jail by draining the
swimming pool, barring the windows, and surrounding the building
with barbed wire. What became known as the Flores Settlement
Agreement was still at issue years later, when the Trump
administration resorted to the forced separation of families after
the courts would not allow long-term jailing of the children.
Schrag provides recommendations for the reform of a system that has
brought anguish and trauma to thousands of parents and children.
Provocative and timely, Baby Jails exposes the ongoing struggle
between the U.S. government and immigrant advocates over the
duration and conditions of confinement of children who seek safety
in America.
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