Migration and Human Rights Project

Over the past decade, immigrant communities in the U.S. have been subjected to an increasing range of systematic human rights violations, including arrest without warrants, incarceration without bail, and deportation without regard to family ties, length of residence in the U.S., or other humanitarian factors.

The Migration and Human Rights Project, based at the Center for Human Rights and International Justice at Boston College, was designed to respond to increasing numbers of forced migrants in the United States and the harsh effects of current U.S. deportation policies. The Project aims to conceptualize a new area of law, providing direct representation to individuals who have been deported, and to promote the rights of deportees and their family members through research, community education, policy analysis, human rights advocacy, and training programs. Through participatory action research carried out in close collaboration with community-based organizations in New England and Guatemala, the Project addresses the psycho-social impact of forced migration and deportation on individuals, families, and communities and provides legal and technical assistance to facilitate community responses. The ultimate aim of the Project is to advocate, in collaboration with affected families and communities, for fundamental changes that will introduce proportionality, compassion, and respect for family unity into U.S. immigration laws and bring these laws into compliance with international human rights standards.

For more information, visit the Center's website.

To learn about a past project led by Brinton in Zacualpa, Guatemala, click here.

Human Rights of Migrants: Transnational and Mixed-Status Families

The Center for Human Rights and International Justice has partnered with community-based organizations in the Boston area to collaborate on an interdisciplinary and transnational project. The project brings together Central American immigrant members of the organizations, staff organizers from the group, lawyers, psychologists, and social workers to document how the recent upsurge of immigration enforcement is affecting immigrants and their families and communities. The aim of the PAR project is twofold: to develop human rights research and advocacy skills among immigrant community members within the United States; and, to produce detailed documentation about the effects of detention and deportation on transnational mixed-status families that can form the basis of a more comprehensive understanding of these families, improve services available to them and their children, and develop human rights documentation for sustained and effective advocacy campaigns. Past partners of the project were Centro Presente, English for Action, and Organización Maya K’iche’. In 2011-2012, the Center partnered with the newly founded Casa El Salvador, located in East Boston. The project has included dozens of collaborative community-university meetings over the past four years and resulted in two major documentation and research projects as well as a series of Know Your Rights workshops.

Post-Deportation Human Rights Project

Over the past decade, immigrant communities in the U.S. have been subjected to an increasing range of systematic human rights violations, including arrest without warrants, incarceration without bail, and deportation without regard to humanitarian factors. Many of those deported have been in the United States since early childhood, and many leave behind spouses, children, parents, and other family members who are U.S. citizens or permanent residents. Many have not had the benefit of legal counsel in their removal proceedings, and have not had the opportunity to pursue all available avenues of relief. Yet once they have left the country, deportees are generally barred from reopening their removal proceedings, and many are barred for life from returning to the U.S.

The Post-Deportation Human Rights Project (PDHRP), based at the Center for Human Rights and International Justice at Boston College, offers a novel and multi-tiered approach to the problem of harsh and unlawful deportations from the United States. It is the first and only legal advocacy project in the country to systematically undertake the representation of individuals who have been deported from the United States.