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107 Iowa L. Rev. 1 (2021-2022)
Law as a Tool of Terror

handle is hein.journals/ilr107 and id is 11 raw text is: Law as a Tool of Terror Stella Burch Elias* ABSTRACT: The immigration laws and policies of the United States from January 2017 through January 2021 serve as a cautionary example of what may happen when the rule of law and the equitable administration of justice are subverted by policymakers pursuing an extreme and coercive political agenda. For four years the Trump Administration used its lawmaking powers to isolate and terrorize immigrant communities. Simply put, the Trump Administration used immigration law as a tool of terror. The same administrative structures and legal provisions that were originally created in the aftermath of 9/I1 to combat terrorism and protect human rights were weaponized and turned against refugees, migrants, and naturalized U.S. citizens. The Department of Homeland Security was transformed from an organization dedicated to combatting terrorism to an organization that instead inspired terror in immigrant communities, particularly among immigrants of color. Inflammatory rhetoric, denigrating specific groups of migrants on the basis of their race, religion, and/or national origin shaped anti-immigrant legal measures, with catastrophic results. At the border and in the interior of the United States, immigration laws were reinterpreted, regulations were amended, executive decrees were issued, and terrifying rumors about potential new initiatives were perpetuated on a daily basis. In the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic and in the absence of stable and settled law, immigrant communities that were already living in extreme precarity experienced heightened and crushing uncertainty; in short, they were living in a state of constant terror. The Biden Administration is now embarking on the project of reversing these damaging initiatives, rebuilding trust in immigrant communities, and restoring the global reputation of the United States. But the harm that has * Professor and Chancellor William Gardiner Hammond Fellow in Law, University of Iowa College of Law. J.D. 2009, Yale Law School; M.A. 2006, Oxford University; B.A. igg8, Oxford University. I am very grateful to Bram Elias, Daria Fisher Page, Emily Hughes, Kit Johnson, Elizabeth Keyes, and participants in the 2058 Central States Law Schools Association Annual Scholarship Conference, the 2019 Emerging Immigration Scholars and Teachers Conference, and the 2019 Maine Law Summer Workshop for their thoughtful comments on earlier iterations of this project, to Victoria Velazquez for her excellent research assistance, and to Barbara Rodriguez, Jared Favero, David Salmon, and the editors of the Iowa Law Review for their many contributions to this piece.

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