Against the deportation terror : organizing for immigrant rights in the twentieth century / Rachel Ida Buff.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Despite being characterized as a "nation of immigrants," the United States has seen a long history of immigrant rights struggles. In her timely book Against the Deportation Terror , Rachel Ida Buff uncovers this multiracial history. She traces the story of the American Committee for the Protection of the Foreign Born (ACPFB) from its origins in the 1930s through repression during the early Cold War, to engagement with "new" Latinx and Caribbean immigrants in the 1970s and early 1980s.

Functioning as a hub connecting diverse foreign-born communities and racial justice advocates, the ACPFB responded to various, ongoing crises of what they called "the deportation terror." Advocates worked against repression, discrimination, detention, and expulsion in migrant communities across the nation at the same time as they supported reform of federal immigration policy. Prevailing in some cases and suffering defeats in others, the story of the ACPFB is characterized by persistence in multiracial organizing even during periods of protracted repression.

By tracing the work of the ACPFB and its allies over half a century, Against the Deportation Terror provides important historical precedent for contemporary immigrant rights organizing. Its lessons continue to resonate today.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Buff (Univ. of Wisconsin-Milwaukee) has written a daring scholarly effort to reclaim history by exposing a spectrum of initiatives by immigrant advocates across racial, ethnic, religious, income, and social status to demand rights for immigrants. Their leftist orientation is but one reason for their erasure from history. The volume examines the experiences of less well-known immigrants and efforts to support claims for residency and against deportation. Each vignette is riveting. Challenging dominant understandings of migration as a march toward assimilation, Buff examines some alternatives including internationalism, transnationalism, and refugee temporalities. Unearthing the history of the American Committee for the Protection of the Foreign Born, the author provides an alternative narrative that is both memory and guide, revealing new frames for history of anti-immigrant policies and a long view of political mobilization among foreign-born citizens, non-citizens, and their allies, including--and rarely discussed--a spectrum of activists of color. Given the current political climate and deportation as immigration policy, the book offers insight into the long game of political mobilization. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. --Robin A. Harper, York College