Written by Michelle Barreto (University of Maryland, College Park)
In October 2018, in my second year of my master’s program, I attended UndocuQueer, a conference designed to foster a greater understanding of the experiences of undocumented, queer individuals and to facilitate coalition-building among students, educators, and allies. Prior to attending the conference, I had served as an international student advisor at another institution, where I provided immigration and academic support to F-1 international students. When I attended the conference, my expectation was that I would learn more about the legal structures that impacted undocumented students and be able to support students in navigating these systems. However, what I ultimately took away was a deeper criticality of immigration systems and a fundamental paradigm shift in how I approached my work to this day.
Eight years later, I continue to reflect on my conference experience and the lessons that came from engaging with scholars and practitioners that work with undocumented students. While I had expected to learn about the laws and policies that undocumented students must contend with, the most significant takeaway was a reminder that immigration, while a formal structure of governance, is also socially constructed and influenced by perceptions of criminality, legality, and deservingness. Immigration, as a system of governance, serves to produce systems of hierarchy in which citizens occupy a relative position of privilege, whereas undocumented individuals are frequently framed as national security threats or criminals. Immigrant populations with documentation, such as F-1 and J-1 students, are often positioned more favorably within dominant narratives yet still scrutinized as a potential threat.
This reminder that immigration operates as a discursive mechanism through which immigrant populations are marginalized is now more relevant than ever. In April 2025, more than 1,800 students lost their F-1 and J-1 visa status without clear reason. Earlier this summer, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security updated the Duration of Status rule, altering a longstanding policy that had governed the length of authorized study for international students for decades. These impacts on F-1 and J-1 students exist within a broader context of heightened xenophobia that impact all migrants in the United States, where the U.S. Supreme Court has permitted racial profiling during immigration stops, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrests have reached historically high levels. The current climate demonstrates the precarity of the United States immigration system and the ways in which socially constructed values shape the legal realities in which our students must navigate.
As a PhD student, I have returned to reading research and scholarship on undocumented students as a source of knowledge and expertise that provides an important lens in understanding how to navigate, and even resist, carceral immigration logics. Undocumented students have long existed in precarious immigration conditions in which both students, and the student affairs professionals that support them, navigated restrictive immigration policies through a combination of strategic advocacy and grassroots activism. Through discrete modes of communication, the use of informal networks, and the grassroot navigation of legal systems, student affairs professionals have found ways to support undocumented students through creative means.
Reflecting on my time as an international student advisor, I recall often finding myself at an impasse in which I had to balance the regulatory and compliance aspects of my work with my ethical values and critical lens on immigration. While there were many instances in which I was positioned to enforce the carceral logics that I opposed, I also saw opportunities for criticality and for shifting the perspectives of my colleagues. A paradigm more closely aligned with undocumented student support fundamentally questions the legal systems that students must navigate rather than assuming those systems to be neutral or inherently good. This paradigm manifested in several ways throughout my work; at times, it involved advocating for a less restrictive interpretation of a federal policy or encouraging dialogue between departments that served different migrant populations. Ultimately, this shift in perspective allowed me to decenter the maintenance of law as the primary objective of my work and instead focus on centering students within systems that often seek to dehumanize them.
As I move forward in my academic journey, I hope to produce research that uplifts critical paradigms which question immigration frameworks and examines how international student advisors can avoid reinforcing systems of surveillance and regulation. While structural constraints may limit the ability of advisors to always center students, it is essential that advisors regularly reflect and question their practice so as not to fall into complacency and perpetuate harm. By remaining attentive to the ways institutional policies are interpreted and how carceral logics shape our understanding of international students, advisors can work toward more student-centered approaches that affirm a student’s humanity.
Author Bio
Michelle Barreto (she/her) is a full-time, second-year PhD student at the University of Maryland, College Park, with over ten years of practitioner experience in student affairs, including serving as a Designated School Official (DSO) and international student advisor.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelle-barreto-a448a750/