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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 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.