Karen Ivette Tejada-Peña

Tejada-Peña will complete a book examining the impacts of “crimmigration” – the merging of the criminal justice and immigration systems – on Salvadorans in Long Island, New York. She argues that gang-related enforcement efforts are one way to facilitate this "racial project" and fuel the deportation machinery. Based on a multi-sited and multi-year qualitative study, she is able to show the toll that this "legal violence" takes on these communities and suggests this is by design, as crimmigration practices scapegoat Salvadorans to expand the role of the criminal justice system in the U.S.