Description
In the fevered battles over immigration, Democrats and Republicans alike agree on this: that migrants who have committed a crime have no place in this country. But targeting migrants because they have committed a crime is a short-sighted appeal to nativist fear. To predicate a migrant's right to stay in the country on whether they are law-abiding and therefore deserving or "criminal" and undeserving does little to improve public safety and has an especially devastating impact on low-income migrants of color.
While Cesar Cuauhtemoc Garcia Hernandez's first book, Migrating to Prison, focuses on the explosion of migrant detention centers over the past decades, Welcome the Wretched tackles head-on what happens when a deeply flawed and racist criminal legal system and immigration system converge to senselessly cruel effect. Drawing on everything from history to legal analyses and philosophy, Garcia Hernandez counters the fundamental assumption that criminal activity has a rightful place in immigration matters, arguing that instead of using the criminal legal system to identify people to deport, the United States should place a reimagined sense of citizenship and solidarity at the center of immigration policy.
About the Author
Cesar Cuauhtemoc Garcia Hernandez is the Gregory H. Williams Chair in Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at the Ohio State University Mortiz College of Law and an immigration lawyer. He has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, NPR, The Guardian, and many other venues. The author of Crimmigration Law as well as Migrating to Prison and Welcome the Wretched (both published by The New Press), he lives in Denver, Colorado.
Reviews
Praise for Welcome the Wretched:
"[Welcome the Wretched] offers timely insights into the vexing problem of citizenship in America."
-Kirkus Reviews
"For those seeking to understand the traps and hidden history of immigration law."
-Library Journal
"A brilliant, deeply personal, and highly readable indictment of the violent, racist history of immigration law's entanglement with criminal law. Garcia Hernandez offers readers a powerful blueprint for remaking the entire U.S. immigration system in a way that's grounded in the fundamental dignity and worth of all immigrants-even ones the law has chosen to mark as "criminals.""
-Aaron Bobrow-Strain, author of The Death and Life of Aida Hernandez: A Border Story
"Combining inspiring stories with legal insights, Welcome the Wretched provides a powerful rebuttal to the bipartisan consensus that immigration is a 'problem' that needs to be solved."
-Reece Jones, author of White Borders: The History of Race and Immigration in the United States from Chinese Exclusion to the Border Wall
"A thought-provoking and much-needed perspective in today's polarized immigration debate, Welcome the Wretched is essential reading for anyone interested in a deep dive into the injustices at the intersection of the immigration and criminal legal systems. Its invitation to 'imagine a radical reconstruction of immigration law' is an urgent call we must all heed if we are to live up to this country's promise as a beacon of hope for the marginalized and oppressed around the world."
-Efren C. Olivares, deputy legal director for immigrant justice at the Southern Poverty Law Center and the author of My Boy Will Die of Sorrow: A Memoir of Immigration from the Front Lines
"Cesar Cuauhtemoc Garcia Hernandez is today's most important thinker about the intersection of immigration and crime. In this personal, historically rooted, and deeply moving book, Garcia Hernandez dismantles many longstanding misconceptions-shared by folks on the right and the left-and makes an urgent plea for rethinking our approach to policing immigration. This book is so damn important."
-John Washington, investigative reporter and author of The Dispossessed
"Welcome the Wretched is a brave book that will enlighten and enrage you. Crimmigration is personal for Cesar Cuauhtemoc Garcia Hernandez. His lucid writing and gut-wrenching stories expose an immigration system that destroys lives and tears families apart. Read it and agitate."
-Paul Butler, author of Chokehold and Let's Get Free
Book Information
ISBN 9781620977798
Author Csar Cuauhtmoc Garca Hernndez
Format Hardback
Page Count 240
Imprint The New Press
Publisher The New Press
Dimensions(mm) 190mm * 133mm * 15mm
