Politicians have been saying there’s an immigration crisis at the border for decades and have been trying to fix it for nearly as long. The rules have changed many times over the years – and they are about to change again as a pandemic-era set of restrictions expires May 11, 2023.

The fire-related deaths of at least 39 migrants in a detention facility in Ciudad Juarez, just across the U.S. border with Mexico, will likely be found to have had several contributing factors.

After a year-and-a-half of restrictions, Professor Robert Irwin and his team traveled to Tijuana to conduct their PIRI funded, community-engaged scholarship. The trip was invaluable and reaffirmed just how much this type of work is needed as this pandemic pervades.

Professors Robert McKee Irwin and Leticia Saucedo received a Public Impact Research Initiative grant to deepen ties with migrant communities in Tijuana through Irwin’s digital storytelling project, Humanizing Deportation, which has been active in Tijuana since its launch in 2016.

UC Davis is committed to being a tireless advocate for international students and scholars. One case in point is the multidisciplinary work of the UC Davis Global Migration Center, led by founding director and international scholar Giovanni Peri.

Irwin, a professor of Spanish, and teams of UC Davis graduate students, as well as collaborators from several Mexican institutions, have carried out fieldwork all over Mexico and California, facilitating the production of hundreds of personal stories on issues relating to deportation.

Roy “RJ” Taggueg, Jr. is an undocumented UC Davis student whose parents came from the Philippines when he was 7 years old. Now he is pursuing a Ph.D. in sociology with a research focus on studying the undocumented Filipinx population.