Conversations: The New Immigration Crisis-Citizenship and Denaturalization in the U.S.
The fall 2019 HSS-sponsored Conversations event detailed the new immigration crisis in the United States (i.e., the threat that citizens can lose their citizenship through legal means). The topic was introduced to a packed Woody Tanger Auditorium audience on December 9, 2019, by Assistant Professor Reynaldo Ortíz-Minaya, of the Department of Puerto Rican and Latino Studies, and Laura Bingham, Esq., a lawyer working as a human rights advocate with the Open Society Foundations. Bingham is the lead author of a new report, "Unmaking Americans: Insecure Citizenship in the United States," which exposes how the Trump administration is targeting naturalized citizens, particularly of South Asian, Mexican, Haitian, and Nigerian descent, for "denaturalization" (i.e. revoking their citizenship). The Open Society Foundations are calling for a moratorium on denaturalization until ICE's discriminatory practices are stopped. The program was co-sponsored by the newly opened Immigrant Student Services Office, led by Brooklyn College alumnus Jesus Perez.
