No Justice in the Shadows, Alina Das
No Justice in the Shadows, Alina Das
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No Justice in the Shadows
How America Criminalizes Immigrants

Author: Alina Das

Narrator: Alina Das, Roxana Ortega

Unabridged: 9 hr 21 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 04/14/2020

Synopsis

This provocative account of our immigration system's long, racist history reveals how it has become the brutal machine that upends the lives of millions of immigrants today.
Each year in the United States, hundreds of thousands of people are arrested, imprisoned, and deported, trapped in what leading immigrant rights activist and lawyer Alina Das calls the "deportation machine." The bulk of the arrests target people who have a criminal record -- so-called "criminal aliens" -- the majority of whose offenses are immigration-, drug-, or traffic-related. These individuals are uprooted and banished from their homes, their families, and their communities.
Through the stories of those caught in the system, Das traces the ugly history of immigration policy to explain how the U.S. constructed the idea of the "criminal alien," effectively dividing immigrants into the categories "good" and "bad," "deserving" and "undeserving." As Das argues, we need to confront the cruelty of the machine so that we can build an inclusive immigration policy premised on human dignity and break the cycle once and for all.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Mariana on January 17, 2021

Siempre he sabido que el sistema de inmigración en los EU tiene problemas (por decir lo menos), pero no sabía de cual magnitud. Un libro crítico, informativo y humano.......more

Goodreads review by Morgan on December 26, 2020

It took a while to get through this book. The personal stories are heartbreaking. So much so that I can hardly believe we don’t learn about the immigration system in grade school; the series of racist policies that allows our country to criminalize and punish SURVIVORS who enter the US after fleeing......more

Goodreads review by Sara on August 30, 2020

"No Justice in the Shadows" by Alina Das is about the history of how America has criminalized immigrants and how we continue to so in current times. This book reinforces the point that we our systems of immigration and mass incarceration upend lives, create chaos, violate human rights, and misuse ta......more

Goodreads review by Jolene on January 12, 2021

Das offers a brilliant, clear, and illuminating argument for legal reform of the immigration system. Just like Michelle Alexander and Bryan Stevenson brought light to the injustice of the mass incarceration and death row systems, Das exposes the flaws of the deportation machine. A must-read for legal......more

Goodreads review by Mihir on May 03, 2024

This was a really difficult read - it took me several months to finish TBH - but such, such an important one. In addition to the harrowing stories that add context to the policy discussions, this book made the connection between hostility to freed slaves and the modern immigration system clearer tha......more

Quotes

"Alina Das has written a riveting account of the cruelty and inhumanity of our immigration system. You can no longer say you did not know or sit on the sidelines. This book is powerful, informative, moving, and most importantly, a call to action to protect our immigrant neighbors and commit to building a country that respects the dignity of all people."—Linda Sarsour, activist and author of We Are Not Here to Be Bystanders: A Memoir of Love and Resistance

"This insightful, accessible book from the trenches of deportation defense connects the reader deeply to the actual human beings who suffer, fight and -- win or lose -- assert their own dignity and that of all migrants. Das' breakdown of punitive 1990s policies reveals not only how harmful and discriminatory each is on its own, but also their devastating effect when stacked on top of each other. There is no victory over a racialized immigration system without challenging the hierarchy of 'good' and 'bad' immigrants, a framework that even well-meaning advocates have accepted. There is another way, if we have the courage and the vision to pursue it."—Rinku Sen, former publisher, Colorlines

"A one-stop shop for anyone who wants to know how the Age of Mass Incarceration fueled the rise of the Deportation Nation, and a stellar unmasking of how legacies of white supremacy continue to stoke the criminalization of non-white immigrants today."—Kelly Lytle Hernandez, Thomas E. Lifka Endowed Chair in History, UCLA, and author of City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles, 1771-1965

"Alina Das' book is a necessary and compelling read to understand how the immigration system in the United States targets Black and Brown immigrants. Das writes with compassion about her clients whose lives are altered by cruel and arbitrary immigration policies that aim to exclude, ban, separate, detain and deport millions of people. Das' book urgently reminds us that ending white supremacy requires the dismantlement of the structures and policies that undergird today's immigration system."—Deepa Iyer, author of We Too Sing America: South Asian, Arab, Muslim, and Sikh Immigrants Shape Our Multiracial Future

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