The Future of the Border Under Trump 2.0

This panel will explore emerging dynamics at the U.S.-Mexico border under Trump's second term. Featuring a range of scholars, panelists will discuss pressing questions and policies that shape the current climate.

Speakers

Stephanie L. Canizales, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley; Director of the Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative

Chappell Lawson, Associate professor of Political Science, MIT

Emily Ryo, Charles L. B. Lowndes Distinguished Professor of Law & Professor of Sociology, Duke University

Moderated by Alisha Holland, Professor of Government, Harvard University.

About the Speakers

Stephanie L. Canizales, PhD, is a researcher, author, and professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and Faculty Director of the Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative. Stephanie specializes in the study of international migration and immigrant integration, with particular interest in the experiences of Latin American migrants in the United States. Over the last decade, Stephanie has focused her research on the migration and coming-of-age of unaccompanied children from Central America and Mexico in the US. Stephanie’s first book, Sin Padres, Ni Papeles, brings together six years of research to tell the stories of unaccompanied migrant youth in Los Angeles, California.

Born and raised in Los Angeles, Stephanie is the daughter of Salvadoran immigrants whose experiences growing up as unaccompanied youth in LA motivate her commitment to public scholarship. Stephanie’s research has appeared in the New York Times, the Atlantic, and the Los Angeles Times, among other public outlets. She aims to impact policy through her work as a Resident Scholar with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and a Research Consultant at UNICEF.

Chappell Lawson is an Associate Professor of Political Science at MIT. Professor Lawson's recent work focuses on homeland security; among other publications, he was editor of Beyond 9/11: Homeland Security for the Twenty-First Century (MIT Press/Belfer Center 2020). From September 2009 through February 2011, Professor Lawson was on leave from MIT as a political appointee in the Obama Administration, serving as Executive Director and Senior Advisor to the Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection; he also served as a Special Government Employee later in the same Administration. Before joining the MIT faculty, he served briefly as a Director of Inter-American Affairs on the National Security Council staff during the Clinton Administration.

Emily Ryo received a JD from Harvard Law School and a PhD in Sociology from Stanford University. She served as a law clerk to the Honorable M. Margaret McKeown of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and practiced law at the international law firm of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen, and Hamilton.

Professor Ryo’s current research focuses on immigration, criminal justice, legal attitudes and legal noncompliance, and procedural justice. She approaches these issues through innovative interdisciplinary lenses, using diverse quantitative and qualitative methods. As an empirical legal scholar, she has published widely in both leading sociology and law journals. Her article with Ian Peacock, “A Study of Pandemic and Stigma Effects in Removal Proceedings,” Journal of Empirical Legal Studies 19(3): 560-593, received the 2023 Article Prize from the Law and Society Association.

Professor Ryo has been awarded the National Science Foundation Research Grant, the ABF/JPB Access to Justice Fellowship, and the Andrew Carnegie Fellowship to support her scholarship. She was the recipient of the 2021 William A. Rutter Distinguished Teaching Award at USC Gould School of Law.

About the Moderator

Alisha C. Holland studies the comparative political economy of development with a focus on Latin America. Her first book, Forbearance as Redistribution: The Politics of Informal Welfare in Latin America(Cambridge University Press, 2017), examines the politics of law enforcement against the poor. She is working on a new book on the institutional determinants and challenges of infrastructure investment in Latin America. Prior to joining the faculty, she was an assistant professor in the Politics Department at Princeton University and a junior fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows.

This event is presented in collaboration with the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.