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LatinoWorld @latinoworld.bsky.social · 7d

📣 Understanding Immigration! Join Dr. Castañeda for an in-depth discussion on today’s immigration realities. He will examine key trends, challenges, and the social, political, and cultural factors shaping immigration in the U.S.

October 15th, 3:30 - 5:00 PM, Hall of Science T07

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Ernesto Castañeda @drernestocast.bsky.social · 5d

Undoc immigrants are less likely to use social programs than the native-born because they aren't eligible or chose not to use them. For evidence, see Ch 5 in "Immigration Realities." On the history and effects of excluding undocumented people from Obamacare and healthcare, see Joseph's "Not All In."

Book covers "Immigration Realities: Challenging Common Misperceptions" (Columbia University Press 2024) by Ernesto Castañeda and Carina Cione and "Not All In: Race, Immigration, and Health Care Exclusion in the Age of Obamacare" (Johns Hopkins University Press 2025) by Tiffany D. Joseph. Sold wherever books are sold.

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Ernesto Castañeda @drernestocast.bsky.social · 3d

ICYMI
We wrote on October 30, 2024, about the potential influences of Project 2025 on immigration policy if Trump were to win. Many recommendations have already been implemented. Read more here:
"Project 2025: Presidential Transition Project & Immigration"
https://f.mtr.cool/vxgpbqaajd

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Kristina Cooke @kristinacooke.bsky.social · 4d

I spoke to a Venezuelan woman who was arrested in this raid and later released with her 4yo son. She said agents broke down their door, pointed guns at them and made sexualized remarks about Venezuelan women. When she returned to her apartment it was boarded up and all her possessions were gone.

Ted Hesson @tedhesson.bsky.social · 4d

US Border Patrol raid sweeps in citizens, families as Chicago crackdown intensifies, w/ @reneehickman.bsky.social @kristinacooke.bsky.social www.reuters.com/world/us/us-...

US Border Patrol raid sweeps in citizens, families as Chicago crackdown intensifies

U.S. Border Patrol agents deployed to Chicago led a late-night raid on an apartment building this week, rappelling from helicopters onto rooftops and breaking down doors in an operation authorities said targeted gang members but which swept up U.S. citizens and families.

www.reuters.com

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Ernesto Castañeda @drernestocast.bsky.social · 10d

"many — including some who voted for the president — say they're alarmed about the use of tactics such as masked immigration agents making arrests and U.S.-born Latinos being arrested."

The big picture: Trump's tariffs have South Texas farmers on edge as crop sales decline, while Latino small-business owners — from bootmakers to small retailers — say their costs are rising.
Grocery prices are up in most categories, and border ports, which are key sources of economic activity in the American Southwest, face financial uncertainty. Meanwhile, Trump's immigration crackdown by masked federal agents occasionally has involved arrests of Mexican Americans and other U.S.-born Latinos, leading to protests and complaints of racial profiling in several cities.
And Trump's push to deport not just dangerous criminals, but also nonviolent undocumented workers and some legal immigrants, has exacerbated labor shortages and helped to fuel inflation in some sectors.
By the numbers: Trump's support is falling among Latinos across gender and age categories, with his favorability 20 points underwater, per a new poll by left-leaning Latino voter group Somos Votantes that was first reported by Politico.
Just 32% of Hispanic voters approved of Trump's performance in a Reuters/Ipsos poll last month — his lowest mark this year.
A quarter of Latinos who backed Trump last November were either disappointed in his performance or regretted voting for him, according to findings in July by the research firm Equis.
Even before the effects of Trump's tariffs began to show, a nonpartisan UnidosUS poll in April found that 61% of Texas Hispanics — and 59% nationwide — disapproved of his first 100 days as president. The cost of living topped their concerns.
Last November, Trump won 48% of Latino voters — a group that had soundly rejected him in 2020 and 2016 — and it was a key factor in his victory over Democrat Kamala Harris, a Pew Research Center analysis found.
Analysts told Axios that Trump edged Harris with Latinos based on the economy and general dissatisfaction with Democrats and President Biden.
Latino support for Trump began to fall immediately after he announced his tariffs…

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Ernesto Castañeda @drernestocast.bsky.social · 7d

Another victim of Dallas shooting has passed: Mr. García-Hernández.
"An official with ICE identified the three victims of the shooting as Mr. García-Hernández, Jose Andres Bordones-Molina of Venezuela and Norlan Guzman-Fuentes of El Salvador. Family members of Mr. Guzman-Fuentes said he was killed."

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TheImmigrationLab @theimmigrationlab.bsky.social · 7d

We have written many reports on the economic contributions of immigrants. Sometimes we get valid criticism about reducing people to their labor. Interestingly many of the immigrants we have been interviewing in NYC & DC say that themselves in their effort to show they matter, hear Marshall Plane.

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Austin Kocher, PhD @austinkocher.com · 7d

Inside Family Detention with Javier Hidalgo and Faisal Al-Juburi from RAICES Texas

Join me on Tuesday Oct 7 at 1:00 pm EST for an in-depth conversation about the harsh realities of family detention and how immigrant rights organizations are responding.

austinkocher.substack.com/p/inside-fam...

Inside Family Detention with Javier Hidalgo and Faisal Al-Juburi from RAICES Texas

Join me on Tuesday October 7 at 1:00 pm Eastern for an in-depth conversation about the harsh realities of family detention and how immigrant rights organizations are fighting back.

austinkocher.substack.com

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TheImmigrationLab @theimmigrationlab.bsky.social · 11d

This book is great to practice your Spanish. Factual and informative book written in a clear, straightforward fashion and read clearly and slowly by a voice professional with a neutral accent.

Ernesto Castañeda @drernestocast.bsky.social · 13d

"Reunidos: Separación familiar y migración de menores" ahora disponible en Audible.
Fácil de entender incluso para gente aprendiendo español. Libro con Daniel Jenks.
Escuchalo en Spotify, Applebooks o aqui:
www.audible.com/pd/Reunidos-...

Reunidos: separación familiar y migración de menores

Check out this great listen on Audible.com. En los últimos años, un creciente número de menores de edad comenzó a llegar sin padres a la frontera entre Estados Unidos y México. En muchos casos, los pa...

www.audible.com

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TheImmigrationLab @theimmigrationlab.bsky.social · 11d

This coming Tuesday!

Ernesto Castañeda @drernestocast.bsky.social · 12d

📣 Authors of "The Big Business of Locking Up Migrants" @nancyhiemstra.bsky.social & Deirdre Conlon expose the profit-driven system behind U.S. immigration detention. With discussants, @austinkocher.com @tazreenasajjad.bsky.social
@drernestocast.bsky.social Register: https://f.mtr.cool/xktcmkvghe

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Ernesto Castañeda @drernestocast.bsky.social · 11d

Given the deportation quotas and aggressive detentions by ICE, all Latinos are suspect. It does not matter if they are citizens, conservative, or voted for Trump; they may be racially profiled, stopped, and even detained -As I told Cesar Miguel Rondon in this video in Spanish.

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TheImmigrationLab @theimmigrationlab.bsky.social · 21d

Talk by Mexican Anthropologist and CLALS Research Fellow Federico Besserer. September 17, 2025. American University, Washington, DC.

TheImmigrationLab @theimmigrationlab.bsky.social · 21d

Talk by Mexican Anthropologist and CLALS Research Fellow Federico Besserer. September 17, 2025. American University, Washington, DC.

TheImmigrationLab @theimmigrationlab.bsky.social · 23d

Classroom “safe spaces” are more complex than they appear. Co-ethnic dynamics, language, and hidden hierarchies shape learning. Read more here:

Invisible Hierarchies

Invisible Hierarchies: How Co-ethnic and Generational Dynamics Affect Latinx Students in the Classroom

theimmigrationlab.org

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TheImmigrationLab @theimmigrationlab.bsky.social · 25d

For Afghan migrants in the US, acculturation is more than learning a new language and celebrating their traditions. It is also about navigating legal precarity and confronting exclusion, while holding hope. Read more here: https://theimmigrationlab.org/blog/f/what-does-it-mean-to-belong

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TheImmigrationLab @theimmigrationlab.bsky.social · Sep 2

The current administration is copying the authoritarian playbook by using the language of security to justify power grabs. Regimes built on this basis always become far more dangerous than the real or fabricated threats they promise to quash. https://theimmigrationlab.org/blog/f/faustian-bargain

TheImmigrationLab @theimmigrationlab.bsky.social · Sep 2

We ask whether someone’s movement is legal or illegal, allowed or forbidden. We debate thresholds and quotas, risks and threats. Rarely do we ask the more human question: Does a person have the right to move freely?
Read more here:
https://theimmigrationlab.org/blog/f/the-first-freedom

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Ernesto Castañeda @drernestocast.bsky.social · Sep 1

"A Place to Call Home: Immigrant Exclusion and Urban Belonging in New York, Paris, and Barcelona" and many other wonderful books from Stanford University Press are 50% off until September 8.
www.sup.org/books/sociol...

As immigrants settle in new places, they are faced with endless uncertainties that prevent them from feeling that they belong. From language barriers, to differing social norms, to legal boundaries separating them from established residents, they are constantly navigating shifting and contradictory expectations both to assimilate to their new culture and to honor their native one. In A Place to Call Home, Ernesto Castañeda offers a uniquely comparative portrait of immigrant expectations and experiences. Drawing on fourteen years of ethnographic observation and hundreds of interviews with documented and undocumented immigrants and their children, Castañeda sets out to determine how different locations can aid or disrupt the process of immigrant integration. Focusing on New York City, Paris, and Barcelona—immigration hubs in their respective countries—he compares the experiences of both Latino and North African migrants, and finds that subjective understandings, local contexts, national and regional history, and religious institutions are all factors that profoundly impact the personal journey to belonging.

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Ernesto Castañeda @drernestocast.bsky.social · Aug 23

The lawsuits against Alligator Alcatraz show the opposition against extreme Republican immigration policies. The judge ruled in favor of protecting alligators etc (rather than the people) but strategy worked. DeSantis knew this was expensive & temporary & is already preparing another facility north.

Speaking to La Tarde NTN24 about calls to close Alligator Alcatraz concentration camp in the Florida Everglades. 8-21-2025

A federal judge in Miami gave the state of Florida 60 days to clear out the immigrant detention facility called Alligator Alcatraz, handing environmentalists and the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians a win after they clashed with Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) over the environmental impacts the makeshift site was having in the federally protected Everglades.
The ruling late Thursday from U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams, which forbids state officials from moving any other migrants there, deals a blow to what had become a marquee symbol of President Donald Trump’s immigration policy.
The environmentalists who sued called it “a huge relief for millions of people who love the Everglades.”

The state filed a notice of appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit less than an hour after the judge issued her order.
At a news conference in Panama City on Friday, DeSantis said Williams “upset the applecart” with her ruling. He said the state is working on converting an old prison in North Florida into a migrant detention center.
“This is not going to deter us,” DeSantis said. “We’re going to continue working on the deportations, advancing that mission. We knew that this would be something that would likely happen.”
In July, Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem toured the facility of trailers and tents, erected with chain-link fencing atop an old airstrip and intended for what Trump described as the “most vicious” migrants. By detaining them there, “we’re going to teach them how to run away from an alligator,” he said. “We’re surrounded by miles of treacherous swampland, and the only way out is really deportation.”
But it was the location the state chose that plagued the facility from the start, according to critics.

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TheImmigrationLab @theimmigrationlab.bsky.social · Aug 31

"Many saw the benefits of being able to walk the streets without fear of being targeted by the gangs as worth the few innocent people that were wrongly detained for life with no due process, even with the chance that the army could take other people like them in the future."

Ernesto Castañeda @drernestocast.bsky.social · Aug 31

"It isn't that there is no crime or drug trafficking in authoritarian regimes, just that the authorities are more likely to be involved. The Faustian bargain of surrendering democracy in exchange for security is a false pretense, an excuse to concentrate power" theimmigrationlab.org/blog/f/faust...

Faustian Bargain

Giving up democracy for the promise of security

theimmigrationlab.org

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TheImmigrationLab @theimmigrationlab.bsky.social · Aug 21

In the Everglades, the new detention camp, “Alligator Alcatraz,” faces local opposition. Environmentalists warn of ecological harm, the Miccosukee Tribe defends their land, and immigrant advocates decry inhumane conditions. Read more:

Land, Lives, and Liberation

Land, Lives, and Liberation: Resisting Alligator Alcatraz in the Everglades

theimmigrationlab.org

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Ernesto Castañeda @drernestocast.bsky.social · Aug 18

As of 8/17/25 "> 40% of the roughly 300 arrests reported by the White House targeted undocumented immigrants." Stephen "Miller’s presence at police headquarters...highlighted how much the 1st week of the federal takeover has focused on immigration enforcement."
www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/202...

Inside Week 1 of Trump’s ‘hostile takeover’ of D.C. police

Federal orders to D.C. police to enforce immigration laws became the fuse igniting a lawsuit D.C. filed against President Donald Trump.

www.washingtonpost.com

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Ernesto Castañeda @drernestocast.bsky.social · Aug 18

In the 80s activists, church & city leaders sought to effect change coalescing into the Sanctuary Movement. The goal was to change US policy. As 1 said in 1985 through “Sanctuary... folks can, number 1, be safe from the fear of death & 2 speak out as to what is really going on in Central America.”

In 1984, the federal government approved less than 3% of U.S. asylum claims by applicants who had fled El Salvador and Guatemala. By comparison, asylum claims were approved for over 30% – and in some cases, 60% – of refugees from Iran, Afghanistan and Poland.

In response, U.S. activists and church and city leaders began to advocate on behalf of refugees from Central America. They sought to effect change at home and abroad, eventually coalescing into what became known as the Sanctuary Movement.

This largely decentralized coalition focused on protecting refugees by providing safe housing, often in churches, and advocating for their right to seek asylum. And they engaged in public outreach to raise awareness about the conditions in Central America and the U.S. government’s role in conflicts there.

The goal was to change U.S. policy. As one sanctuary worker in Texas said in 1985, according to accounts compiled at the Benson Latin American Collection at the University of Texas at Austin: “Sanctuary offers a way, by which folks can, number one, be safe from the fear of death, and, number two, speak out as to what is really going on in Central America.”

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Ernesto Castañeda @drernestocast.bsky.social · Aug 19

Presentaremos el audiolibro en México el 2 de septiembre en la Feria Universitaria del Libro. @jenksd.bsky.social
www.uaeh.edu.mx/ful/2025/ind...

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Simulated Chollas @simulatedchollas.bsky.social · Aug 18

“This scenario [of disinformation and securitization] directly applies to the issue of the US-Mexico border. Heavy investment in surveillance and enforcement infrastructure has led to additional challenges, such as increased migrant mortality.”

TheImmigrationLab @theimmigrationlab.bsky.social · Aug 18

Border walls and “security” rhetoric don’t make the U.S. safer—they fuel xenophobia. Misinformation fuels fear, framing immigrants as threats and justifying harsh policies that harm communities.

Read more:

Walls, Fear, and Misinformation

Walls, Fear, and Misinformation: How the Securitization of Immigration in the US Fuels Xenophobia

theimmigrationlab.org

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