Session Type(s): Panel
Starts: Friday, Oct. 8 1:00 PM (Eastern)
Ends: Friday, Oct. 8 2:00 PM (Eastern)
Deportations soared under Obama; Trump intensified oppression of immigrant communities. Advocates and organizers look to the Biden Administration to reshape immigration policy, especially the immigration enforcement infrastructure. There are increased calls for the abolition of ICE and elimination of the practice of imprisoning immigrants — significant features of the prison industrial complex. We will examine how abolition of detention would functionally end deportation.
Adrianna is Program Coordinator at Free Migration Project. In this role she has had the opportunity to moderate multiple conversations on important community issues, including press conferences for the Shut Down Berks Campaign and panels on ending medical deportation. She obtained a Master of Arts in Social Work, Concentration on Social Administration, from The University of Chicago in 2018, and a Baccalaureate of Arts in Psychology from Universidad de Puerto Rico, Río Piedras in 2012. Originally from Levittown in Toa Baja, Puerto Rico, she has an extensive background in social and scientific research, as well as experience in policy and advocacy in nonprofit organizations. Adrianna is interested in the intersections of policy advocacy, law, research and community organizing as a tool for the empowerment of the immigrant community. Within this work she values the frameworks of abolition, intersectional feminism and decolonial practice.
Jamila is a Texan, anti-imperialist, Immigration organizer, PIC abolition organizer, border abolitionist, labor organizer, educator, writer, and PhD Student at the CUNY Graduate Center studying Community Organizing & Social Movements with a focus in migration and no borders. Jamila is a Frederick Douglass 200 Bicentennial Abolitionist Honoree, on the Open Borders Conference Steering Committee, on the board of Free Migration Project, and will bring their years-long engagement organizing in and with migrant and border communities to bear in their perspective on abolition of detention, deportation and open borders.
Fabio Rojas is the Virginia L. Roberts professor of sociology at Indiana University, Bloomington. He is the author of two books on social activism and he has also written for the Washington Post, USA Today, the HIll, and Inside Higher education.
Samah Sisay was born in Liberia and immigrated to the United States with her family at a young age during the country’s civil war. She organizes with Survived and Punished New York; a prison industrial complex abolition coalition working to end the criminalization of all survivors of domestic and sexual violence. Samah is also a Bertha Justice Fellow at the Center for Constitutional Rights, where she specializes in international human rights and challenging inhumane immigration policies and abusive police practices. As part of her work at CCR, Samah advocates with the Abolish ICE New York-New Jersey coalition to end ICE contracts with local county jails and free criminalized immigrants facing deportation. Prior to coming to CCR, Samah worked as an Equal Justice Works Fellow at African Services Committee where she provided legal representation on immigration matters to criminalized Black immigrants impacted by gender violence. Samah earned a B.A. in International Affairs at the George Washington University and her law degree from New York University School of Law.