UN Official: “Extensive use of immigration detention leads to tragedies like this one.” The fire-related deaths of at least 39 migrants in a detention facility in Ciudad Juarez, just across the U.S. border with Mexico, will likely be found to have had several contributing factors. There was the immediate cause of the blaze, the mattresses apparently set alight by desperate men in the center to protest their imminent deportation. And then there is the apparent role of guards, seen on video walking away from the blaze. But as an expert on immigration policy, I believe there is another part of…
Author: Raquel Aldana, UC Davis
Raquel Aldana, UC Davis
Raquel E. Aldana is Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Diversity at UC Davis and a Professor of Law at the School of Law. She joined UC Davis in 2017. Aldana is a graduate of Arizona State University (earning a bachelor’s degree in English and another in Spanish) and Harvard Law School. She was a professor at the William S. Boyd School of Law, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, before joining the McGeorge School of Law faculty in 2009. Her scholarship has focused on transitional justice, criminal justice reforms, and sustainable development in Latin America, as well as immigrant rights in the United States. She has taught immigration law and international human rights, lawyering for immigrants, “crimmigration,” criminal law and procedure, international labor law, Latin American comparative law, international public law, international human rights, statutes and regulations, and the Central American migration corridor.