Photo: El Paso Crossing Art. (Photo: Jonathan McIntosh, cropped.) CC BY 2.0.

Please view our conversation with the book author of Illegal: How America's Lawless Immigration Regime Threatens Us All

In Illegal, Elizabeth F. Cohen reveals that our current crisis has roots in early twentieth century white nationalist politics, which began to reemerge in the 1980s. Since then, ICE and CBP have acquired bigger budgets and more power than any other law enforcement agency. Now, Trump has unleashed them. If we want to reverse the rising tide of abuse, Cohen argues that we must act quickly to rein in the powers of the current immigration regime and revive saner approaches based on existing law. Going beyond the headlines, Illegal makes clear that if we don’t act now all of us, citizen and not, are at risk. 

Book Author:
Elizabeth F. Cohen is Professor in the Department of Political Science at Syracuse University. 

Discussant:
Margaret Peters is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Los Angeles.

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Duration: 1:22:09