Migrants, Legal Issues

Trans migrants to the United States face a variety of legal issues that range from obtaining a legal status with gender-congruent identity documents to being at risk of detention and deportation. Migration studies and trans studies scholars have highlighted [Page 533]how the convergence of criminal law and immigration law since the 1990s has disproportionately affected trans migrants. Trans migrants face legal and economic barriers to legal status, which makes them more vulnerable to policing and criminalization. Trans migrants who are classified as deportable by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have been subject to violence and death in immigration detention facilities. In turn, some trans studies scholars have critiqued reformist responses to the immigration detention and deportation regime in the United States.