Apr 10 2025 52 mins 1
On today’s show, host Allen Ruff is joined by scholar and activist Rachel Ida Buff to talk about the right to due process through the 14th Amendment and the Trump Administration’s goal to end birthright citizenship. She’s written a recent article on this topic for The Progressive, “As Trump Sets His Sights on Birthright Citizenship, Deported Mothers Fight for Their Children’s Rights.”
During the first Trump presidency, the idea of removing birthright citizenship was just a “twinkle in the administration’s eye,” says Buff. But now immigrant mothers, particularly women who give birth while seeking asylum, are being targeted. Buff reminds listeners that whatever can be done to a targeted minority can be done to anyone.
Buff says that the Trump administration “is in a rush to get rid of a class of people.” And they’re using what Buff calls “zombie laws,” older and obscure legislation and policies that they resurrect to create loopholes they can exploit. Buff describes the history of Title 42, the Alien and Sedition Acts, and the language of invasion that hearkens back to 1950s science fiction.
Despite all the turmoil, Buff says she’s paying attention to the heroic actions of the foreign born, interracial organizing in Milwaukee, and the coalition work across the country.
Rachel Ida Buff is a historian of migration and immigrant rights movement at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Her most recent book, A is for Asylum Seeker: Words for People on the Move/A de Asilo: Palabras para Persona en Movimiento, is a bilingual, historical glossary of terms. Her work has appeared in Academe, The Boston Review, Jacobin, Jewschool, Public Scholar, and Truthout.
Featured image: a remix of a photo of Rachel Ida Buff by Sara Gabler/WORT.
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During the first Trump presidency, the idea of removing birthright citizenship was just a “twinkle in the administration’s eye,” says Buff. But now immigrant mothers, particularly women who give birth while seeking asylum, are being targeted. Buff reminds listeners that whatever can be done to a targeted minority can be done to anyone.
Buff says that the Trump administration “is in a rush to get rid of a class of people.” And they’re using what Buff calls “zombie laws,” older and obscure legislation and policies that they resurrect to create loopholes they can exploit. Buff describes the history of Title 42, the Alien and Sedition Acts, and the language of invasion that hearkens back to 1950s science fiction.
Despite all the turmoil, Buff says she’s paying attention to the heroic actions of the foreign born, interracial organizing in Milwaukee, and the coalition work across the country.
Rachel Ida Buff is a historian of migration and immigrant rights movement at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Her most recent book, A is for Asylum Seeker: Words for People on the Move/A de Asilo: Palabras para Persona en Movimiento, is a bilingual, historical glossary of terms. Her work has appeared in Academe, The Boston Review, Jacobin, Jewschool, Public Scholar, and Truthout.
Featured image: a remix of a photo of Rachel Ida Buff by Sara Gabler/WORT.
Did you enjoy this story? Your funding makes great, local journalism like this possible. Donate here
