#AbolishICE: A Framework Toward Abolishing Borders – Panel Presentation

October 19, 2019 – 10:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Open Borders Conference 2019 – The New School

66 West 12th Street, New York, NY 10011
Arnhold Hall, Room I-202

The movement to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement (as popularized by the Twitter hashtag “AbolishICE”), has been motivated by ICE’s brutality against migrating people. Though the movement has many adherents, there is an ongoing debate over what the phrase means or should mean. Our panelists will address the policies, proposals, and revolutionary changes that can be read into this phrase, from de-criminalizing border crossings to the wholesale abolition of all migration restrictions, and what role these steps play in reaching the ultimate goal of opening borders.

Panelists:

Guadalupe Ambrosio is the Co-Executive Director at the New York State Youth Leadership Council – the first undocumented youth led organization in New York. She is a community organizer and educator, born in Mexico City and raised in the Bronx. She is a leading Immigrant Rights Organizer and Fat Liberation activist.

Alina Das is a Professor of Clinical Law at NYU School of Law, where she co-teaches and co-directs the Immigrant Rights Clinic. She and her clinic students represent immigrants and community organizations in litigation and advocacy to advance immigrant rights locally and across the country. She graduated magna cum laude with an AB in government from Harvard University, and graduated cum laude from NYU Law as a Root-Tilden-Kern Scholar with a joint MPA from NYU’s Wagner School of Public Services. Das is the recipient of numerous awards recognizing her outstanding teaching and legal advocacy.

Emily Tucker is a Supervising Attorney and Teaching Fellow in the Federal Legislation Clinic at Georgetown University Law Center. She has spent the last decade working with grassroots groups to organize, litigate, and legislate against the criminalization and surveillance of poor communities and communities of color. She served for six years as the Senior Staff Attorney for Immigrant Rights at the Center for Popular Democracy, and prior to that she was the Policy Director at Detention Watch Network. Her primary area of legal expertise is the intersection between the immigration and criminal justice systems. She earned her BA at McGill University, a master’s in theological studies at Harvard Divinity School, and her JD at Boston University Law School.

Jillian Lane White is an Afro-Indigenous cultural organizer and media maker living in Brooklyn on occupied Lenape land. Her political and artistic identity has been greatly influenced by the works of queer feminists of color like Gloria Anzaldúa, Barbara Smith, and Audre Lorde; multi-disciplinary creative documentarians like Zora Neale Hurston; and the many generations of ancestors and spirits that use(d) their creativity to ensure our collective healing and survival.

Moderator: Sara Gozalo, organizer and filmmaker.