Spring 2026 Colloquium Series - Dr. Emily Ryo

Immigrants, like all individuals, exist within networks of social relationships that shape their identities, inform their decision-making, and guide their behavior. Certain areas of substantive U.S. immigration law—the body of law governing who may enter or remain in the United States—explicitly acknowledge this social embeddedness by protecting or privileging valued social relationships. In contrast, procedural immigration law—the set of rules governing how substantive immigration law is implemented and enforced—undermines or destroys those very relationships. The U.S. government’s practice of transferring immigrant detainees across multiple detention facilities and confining them in remote locations is a paradigmatic example of such destructive procedural immigration law in action. This Article presents the first systematic empirical analysis of interfacility transfers and remote detention in the U.S. immigration detention system. Our empirical findings show that in the past fifteen years, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has routinely relied on long‑distance transfers that cross state lines and federal judicial circuits, as well as confinement of individuals in remote locations. Our analysis, however, also reveals that certain practices, such as transferring individuals multiple times throughout their detention, have sharply accelerated during the second Trump administration. We argue that procedural immigration law should recognize the social embeddedness of immigrants, and that doing so with respect to immigrant detainees requires strictly limiting and regulating the use of interfacility transfers and remote detention.

 

Bio: Emily Ryo is the Charles L. B. Lowndes Distinguished Professor of Law and Professor of Sociology at Duke Law School. She was previously a professor of law and sociology at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law, and prior to that, a research fellow at Stanford Law School. She received a JD from Harvard Law School and a PhD in Sociology from Stanford University. She served as a law clerk to the Honorable M. Margaret McKeown of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and practiced law at Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen, and Hamilton.

Professor Ryo’s current research focuses on immigration, criminal justice, legal attitudes and legal noncompliance, and access to justice. She approaches these issues through innovative interdisciplinary lenses, using diverse quantitative and qualitative methods. As an empirical legal scholar, she has published widely in both leading sociology and law journals. Her article with Ian Peacock, “A Study of Pandemic and Stigma Effects in Removal Proceedings,” Journal of Empirical Legal Studies 19(3): 560-593, received the 2023 Article Prize from the Law and Society Association.