Nothing quite prepares you to witness a stranger wrap a tether around your mother’s ankle. Caught between trying to console mommy’s hysterical state versus physically turning away as if that would somehow erase the scene, one reaction is not more right than the other. Either is simply a combination of emotions ranging from sadness to anger as you grapple with broken promises that were never actually made to you. For so long we thought we were grieving the loss of the America that was, until we were forced to come face to face with what has always been. I searched tirelessly for answers to questions like “Where is everyone?” and “How is any of this normal?.” It isn’t until these same questions finally began proving themselves unsolvable that unprotected communities were left with the conclusion that we did not even know was exactly where we began: there is simply no fixing a system constructed to harm you. 

Admittedly, my first-ever encounter with calls to abolition were filled with confusion and uncertainty. For the overwhelming majority of my life, I prided myself on being realistic, practical and results-driven. The fact that these same traits translated to my excitement for a reformed immigration system was not intentional, but it did make sense. After all, I had already invested so much emotional energy, if nothing else, into manifesting a green card for every undocumented member of my community—including my own parents. If you dream for something long enough, it begins to consume you. But I was mostly okay with that. In fact, I welcomed this consumption as long as it meant my sacrifices could mean something in the end. Just weeks before submitting law school applications that were beginning to collect dust out of fear of rejection, I reflected back to what brought me to the application cycle to begin with. And frankly, that was never abolition. I was too afraid to say it out loud even then, but my truth has always been the belief that institutional systems could be fixed from the inside, and I aspired for nothing more than to be part of that change. 

Ironically, the severe escalation of attacks on immigrant communities by the Trump administration only reinforced that hope. What could it look like for well-intended, like-minded individuals to finally take a crack at fixing a system that persisted in waging war on so many people and their inherent freedom to peacefully move around the world? I would soon learn that the answer was effectively nothing. That no matter how much faith I stubbornly placed in an immigration system that had never protected me, I would always find myself disappointed on the other side of it. More importantly, it would only become more clear that my own good intentions had nothing to do with that fact. Instead, the lose-lose situation was meant to unfold in that way. 

Forced to make these new connections, the shift to an abolition framework became a gradual one. Although difficult at first, it was undeniable how good exploring this approach to immigration transformation felt. However, learning about abolishing immigration systems as we have always known them was equally difficult for that exact reason. Needless to say, this proved truer for the risk-adverse “realists” among us like me. On the one hand, the community organizer in me knew all too well the power of envisioning. At the same time, I repeatedly found myself as a first-year law student trapped in denial that law is not sufficient to lead lasting change. 

Despite both right-wing and soft-liberal attempts at painting any form of abolition as extreme, the research cuts the other way. In the words of Silky Shah of the Detention Watch Network:

 . . . despite our best efforts to expose all the inhumane aspects of detention, the response from the [Obama] administration was to improve conditions and increase transparency. It was the end of Obama’s first term and—despite early promises of reform to the immigration detention system—the number of people detained and deported each year had only increased. 

Moreover, the historic underpinnings of the existing immigration model are clear. 

Anti-Blackness fuels U.S. immigration enforcement. The immigration detention system began to take its current form in 1980, when Haitian migrants arrived on Florida’s shores, and Black migrants continue to be disproportionately targeted for deportation. Within the first few weeks of the Biden administration, hundreds of immigrants from African and Caribbean nations were deported.

In these ways, the facts were undisputed as it pertained to the systemic racism that underlies American immigration, thereby only strengthening the call for abolition. This is especially true when the only other alternative is to acknowledge the inseparable injustices from the institution, but carry on as if time will somehow move us any closer to progress. 

Equally noteworthy though is the reality that abolition is the epitome of the long road ahead. The minimum level of naivety it requires—that an equitable alternative can exist—is a double-edged sword. Without it, we give way to growing, pessimistic outlooks on a society that will always resist change. Yet the exact opposite can be true when we allow ourselves to boldly believe we can evolve into something more.

As a result, replacing reform-centered ideals of immigration with abolitionist ones is continuously a difficult task. Despite years of unlearning systemic discrimination and tracing anti-immigrant laws to their root, I often still find myself longing for the possibility that reformed laws and humane enforcement tactics can effect change. Just recently, this became especially true following the Biden administration’s guidance on prosecutorial discretion. Calling DHS attorneys’ attention to “the severe immigration court backlog,” the agency all but demanded a “focus [on] DHS’s finite resources [by] pursuing priority cases rather than relitigating previously completed cases.” 

The guidance on its own has the strong potential to facilitate legal status for hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants. For the first time in a very long time, families like my own that had already come to terms with never obtaining legal status, will be able to take advantage of this discretionary loophole. Considering the prospect of my own community benefitting tremendously from these shifts, I again found myself wrestling with the facade that reform does work. 

It is this back and forth between reform versus abolition that regularly left me too anxious to demand anything short of abolition. How could I demand we break these systems down and start over, and in the same breath celebrate victories like the expansion of prosecutorial discretion and a final end to Title 42? Internally, that dichotomy felt hypocritical. If I was going to assert that abolition was the goal, I reasoned, I needed to do so with my chest. 

In more ways than one, I am left with many of the same emotions I started my legal career with. Except this time, worry stemming from uncertainty about abolition is not among them. I have already made peace with the fact that reform, although occasionally successful, is capped. Perhaps there was never any doubt that a reformed immigration system could change individual lives—including those closest to me. Rather it has always been a question of whether reform is enough. It is not. And abolition alone gives us permission to foster a radical reimagination of tomorrow.