“When Is a Migrant a Refugee?”

In June of 2018, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that domestic and gang violence would no longer be sufficient cause for asylum and refugee status in the United States.¹ This announcement quickly would be overshadowed by the even more egregious and appalling formation of Sessions’ and the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy toward undocumented migration: the separation of children from their parents during detention and federal, criminal trial at the US-Mexico border.² These two policies became the latest attacks in a longstanding war on migrant life in the United States. Coupled together, they indicate what might best be thought of as a “gloves off” approach to the production of valueless life in the borderlands of US immigration enforcement.