Masha Gessen: The Bureaucratic Nightmare of Fighting Deportation

In “The Bureaucratic Nightmare of Fighting Deportation,” Masha Gessen writes in the New Yorker about one person’s attempt to seek withholding of removal before an immigration court.  The piece is a powerful reminder of the immigration law’s humanitarian roots, the coercive–indeed, agonizing–role that detention plays in immigration adjudication, and the narratives being produced about immigrants in America today.  The respondent in the piece has flaws:  a criminal record accumulated due to an opioid addiction, and arguably no particularly overwhelming positive equities.  (“The only thing that entitles Schimanski to the compassion of her fellow-residents of the United States is her humanity,” writes Gessen. “It is humanity that immigration law is supposed to protect.”).

-JKoh