Criminal Deportation Pipeline Project

In the Spring of 2021 SADR founders Professor David Brotherton (John Jay, CUNY) and Sarah Tosh (Rutgers) were awarded National Science Foundation grant to study the existence of a “criminal deportation pipeline” in New York City which is shaped by the relationship between federal immigration enforcement practices, local policing and criminal justice procedures. This concept of a “criminal deportation pipeline” is constituted of a variety of institutional policies and procedures directly affected by a punitive turn in U.S. policymaking that began in the 1980s.

This study examines the local practices that shape criminal deportation in New York City - including racial, ethnic and spatial disparities in criminal justice enforcement as well as protective policies providing aid to immigrants with criminal records, and grassroots movements of community-based resistance. The project responds to three questions:

1. How do local patterns of non-immigration related criminal justice enforcement shape the flow of the criminal deportation pipeline?

2. How do protective legal policies and practices affect the function of the criminal deportation pipeline?

3. How do immigrants experience and respond to overlapping processes of criminalisation and deportation?

In order to investigate NYC’s criminal deportation pipeline, this project conducted targeted observation of deportation proceedings; secondary analysis of official documents and administrative government datasets; and in-depth interviews with affected immigrants, legal practitioners, and community-based advocates.

If you would like to learn more about this project please email Nick Rodrigo on nrodrigo@jjay.cuny.edu