As the second of three panels about U.S. immigration policy came to a close Feb. 28, the audience laughed at the moderator’s question.
“Maybe we can end this on a positive note?”
In a political environment with increased tensions over immigration, “positive notes” are welcome.
The Boston University Law Review’s spring 2025 Symposium invited law professors and activists from around the country to discuss resistance against active immigration restrictions that are causing tens of thousands of arrests and deportations.
On the first day of President Donald Trump’s second term, he implemented 34 immigration-related policies, creating uncertainty for 13.7 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States.
Crystal Hsu, editor-in-chief of the Law Review, said she wanted the event to create a sense of “community” so “we can strategize, we can organize and we can overcome this feeling of despair to move forward in a meaningful way.”
Senior Managing Editor Karen Yao emphasized that the symposium — “The Past, Present, and Future of U.S. Immigration Law” — highlights the long history of immigration being weaponized and that she hopes that the event is able to recenter people’s lived experiences.
The event was organized into three panels, each discussing the past, present and future of U.S. immigration policy.
“It is incumbent upon us to make room for radical imagination, for organizing and for resistance,” said Sarah Sherman-Stokes, associate director of the Immigrants’ Rights and Human Trafficking Clinic at BU Law School.
Sherman-Stokes said she hoped the event encouraged people to “think creatively” about the law’s relationship to activism.
During the symposium, The Ohio State University law professor César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández referenced the creation of the border between Mexico and the U.S., stating the physical establishment of a boundary is a “contradiction” to this day.
“Borders are created. They’re fictions that are imagined onto geography that are then imbued by law with special meaning,” he said.
During the panel on the present state of immigration policy, speakers emphasized how much other aspects of the law, such as family or criminal law, interact heavily with immigration.
Lisa Washington, assistant professor of law at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School, shared instances in her legal practice where the U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement would use court appearances to detain undocumented people, including victims of domestic violence, and where family court orders were used to question the “good moral character” of migrants.
“How do we build on the expertise that we have from those prior moments, how can we build momentum to resist?” Washington said. “How can we transform some of the underlying scripts?”
Many speakers questioned how to best resist current policies and support organizers.
During the panel on the future, Andrea Manrique, founder and executive director of the Alagape Organization, said her experience as a detainee in an ICE facility motivated her to start organizing.
“I stopped being Andrea Manrique,” she said through an interpreter. “For an ICE official could look at my eyes and tell me that I was a ‘cockroach.’ When they take away everything, they also try to rob your humanity.”
Manrique said her freedom was not simply physical, but came from reclaiming her voice, identity and power — which she said is only possible through organizing from a place of compassion.
Manrique’s organization, Alagape, provides support by providing therapy and emotional resources for detainees and their families as well as education and legal resources.
“The future of immigration does not depend only on laws or reform,” she said. “It depends on how we support those who are going through the system.”
