Paper short abstract:

The implementation of more restrictive immigration policies led to major litigation in several U.S. courts. This paper asks how state representatives, legal professionals & people on the move negotiate in this legal arena ‘truth’ around the right to mobility or the nation-state’s right to expulsion.

Paper long abstract:

People on the move trying to access the U.S. asylum system have systematically been blocked from doing so through closed border policies implemented under the Trump administration. In this contribution, I draw on ethnographic engagement with one of those policies, the so-called Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP). Declaring that persons seeking protection in the U.S. were doing so 'wrongfully' by issuing 'fraudulent asylum claims,' the policy expulsed and forced asylum-seekers to stay in Mexico throughout their asylum procedure. Several lawsuits challenged the policy over a period of three years. Through an ethnographic analysis of the legal activism before and during selected court cases around MPP, I examine the different types of evidence that are used in the court procedures to create 'truth', or to adhere to truths around the application of immigration law. Specifically, I investigate the claims for rights brought forward by asylum-seeking persons and their legal representatives. Building upon legal anthropology, I attend to the logics of law-in-the-making and its application on the ground, as well as resistance against it. Consequently, I elaborate on further moral and legal categories used in the governance of migration to either support the right to mobility or conversely the nation-state`s right to prevent entry to its territory. Thus, I take a closer look at ‘rightful’ victimhood and humanitarian reasoning used to challenge the ‘truth’ of the (il)legality of government practices and the power of bureaucratic discretion.