“If we don't pursue abolishing borders, then we're never going to get there.”

Bill Ong Hing describes the pragmatic steps to transforming, and ultimately dismantling, a broken immigration system.

“It’s not that impressive.”

Part way through our conversation about his recent book, Humanizing Immigration: How to Transform Our Racist and Unjust System, Professor Bill Ong Hing bats away my admiration for the sheer number of countries the individuals he’s worked with have come from. Quick to recognize the ways our immigration system overlooks various individuals and particularly focused on the “double-barreled” racism experienced by Black and Latinx immigrants, Professor Hing is focused on change more so than living off of past wins and statistics.

Professor of Law and Migration Studies at the University of San Francisco, Professor Hing is also professor of Law and Asian American Studies Emeritus, at UC Davis. In this second part of our conversation, Professor Hing describes the strong connections between immigration reform and abolition and describes the pragmatic steps readers might take toward transforming a broken immigration system. If you missed the first part of our conversation, check it out here:

Antero Garcia: Your book puts immigration reform and prison reform directly in conversation. Oftentimes, it feels like those movements are at odds in terms of resources and attention, even though they shouldn’t be.  

Bill Ong Hing: Absolutely. It’s because I think there's all kinds of problems with the criminal justice system. There are some parts of the criminal justice system that are fascinating. For example, I write about deferred prosecution agreements, that are usually provided to gigantic mega corporations who have committed criminal acts. They are always getting these deferred prosecution agreements. So rather than the company presidents and the CEOs going to jail, they promise to behave themselves for five years and then everything is dropped. Well, to me, that's a good thing. I'm willing to even let them be reformed. I can't be hypocritical.

AG: Because it creates precedent? Is that why it's a good thing?

BOH: Yeah, exactly. It creates an example of what can work. It is also racist and I'm calling it out. I do think there are things to borrow from the criminal justice system, including things like the right to an attorney, the right to motions, to suppress evidence that was obtained illegally, that kind of stuff. But you're right: there's overlap between criminal justice reform and immigration reform. And it's immigrants these days, it's primarily Latinx and Black migrants it this intersection. In an older time, I could point to Asian examples, but these days it is Latinx and Black migrants who have this double-barreled problem with the criminal justice system first, which becomes a pipeline to the deportation system.

AG: I appreciate how, in the very first pages of your book, you point to the plight of Black immigrants in particular as the most persecuted group right now.

BOH: Most of what I've written about and who I represent are primarily migrants from Latin America. But I have been reminded correctly about data by organizations like BAJI, the Black Alliance for Just Immigration and, locally in San Francisco, African Advocacy Network.

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The data is really stark: if you're a Black migrant, you actually have a bigger chance of being criminally prosecuted and also deported and detained. I mean, there's smaller numbers of these individuals than Latinx migrants, but the proportions that get deported and detained are higher in the Black community. It’s very convincing if you just look, you can see this double barrel racism happening. It's always a bad idea to compare different degrees of being mistreated, but everyone has rights, and we should recognize when it's happening.

AG: You frame this as a fault in who you have focused on and represented. It seems like, if anything, you're guilty of geography, based on who you encountered and patterns of immigration and migration in the Bay Area.

BOH: Well, thank you for giving me a pass on that. But I will tell you, I also had a similar background. I grew up in a small town in Arizona where a majority of the town was Mexican American. I also had many, many Native American classmates. And so, in another long piece that I wrote on Americanization, I actually devoted a big section to Native Americans. I came out here to go to college at Berkeley, and that was when my first roommate was an African American guy. We're still good friends.

 Geographically, yes, I've handled Haitian cases. And I actually successfully represented a Black man from South Africa and won asylum for him in the early 1990s before apartheid ended. He just happened to stumble into my clinic at that time.

AG: Have you created a map of the countries of individuals you’ve represented?

BOH: It's not that impressive. No.

AG: You've named three continents in the past minute alone!

BOH: It's not that impressive. The South African guy is a one-off, and then I've represented a couple people from France and Eastern Europe …

AG: That’s four continents now!

[laughs]

I want to shift and ask a question about pragmatism. I would love a borderless and prison free society. As an educator, I want schools that are safe and dignity affirming. And so, I think of the pragmatic steps in between these seemingly radical visions and what we can do right now. I'm curious from your legal and professional experience, what kinds of ways might we move toward that kind of vision?

BOH: I end the book stating that if we don't ask, and if we don't pursue abolishing borders, then we're never going to get there. And I do want to get there.

I could be seen as guilty of advocating for tinkering around the edges. Or maybe even not so much tinkering, but actually radically looking differently  at a particular law, that I know it's not going to be changed, but it can be interpreted in a different way? That is how I would answer your question. I am hopeful that with the right advocacy, even within the system, that judges can look at things differently. I know there's a section of the book where I dump on immigration judges, and I'll stand by that because a lot of them are evil and crazy.

I would love it if there was a completely different immigration judge core that was higher caliber people. But within that system, I've seen judges be educated about domestic violence, for example. And even before that, I've seen judges be educated about anti-gay actions and legislation and how that is manifested in different countries. For example, on domestic violence, the three countries that I'm most familiar with, Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador, all three of them, they have domestic violence laws. And so, on the face of that, an immigration judge says, "Well, how can you claim that the state's not going to protect someone?" Some people get arrested sometime, but many judges are capable of being educated if you indicate how rarely. It's not very often that people actually are arrested.

How often do police actually turn a blind eye? Usually. Now, we have much better luck with domestic violence cases because the judges have been educated. Of course, that has happened with anti-gay claims as well. Some people might call this chipping away rather than a major overnight thing, but I do think that it can be done.

In the book, I add, in the appendix, these motions for attorneys. Most of the book is meant to be read by anyone, though. However, there is a technical part where I'm encouraging lawyers to raise issues of racism in motions in the immigration courts. I tell them how to do that. I raise them every once in a while and the judges kind of laugh at me. But what is good when they do that, they laugh at me, but they grant the case on some other great grounds.

AG: Oh, that's interesting.

BOH: It's kind of like a negotiating tool. They don't look at it that way, but I'm beginning to look at it that way. I encourage attorneys to raise these issues of racism because it happens.

Propina

We’ll conclude our conversation with Professor Hing next week. If you would like to learn more about his work, please check out Humanizing Immigration here.

And, given the rapidly changing landscape of American politics over the past weeks (and coming months), if you are a La Cuenta reader and would like to share how election-related dialogue about immigration and immigration policy is affecting you, please reach out. We would love to hear from you.

We’ll see you next week.