Immigration trials and international crimes: Expressing justice and performing race
| Author | Nicola Palmer |
| Published date | 01 August 2021 |
| Date | 01 August 2021 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/13624806211009157 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/13624806211009157
Theoretical Criminology
2021, Vol. 25(3) 419 –436
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/13624806211009157
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Immigration trials and
international crimes:
Expressing justice and
performing race
Nicola Palmer
King’s College London, UK
Abstract
This article examines the performative collisions between the wrong of genocide and
the invocation of this international crime as a means to secure carceral control of
borders. Drawing on courtroom observations, legal transcripts and the media coverage
of an immigration trial in the United States, the article explores the performative
relationship between international criminal law and immigration law. It argues that this
relationship helped to construct and racialize the category of the ‘criminalized migrant’
while establishing the perceived ‘civility’ of criminal law as a primary means of enacting
domestic border control. While race was never made explicit in the trial, it emerged in
a fractured but significant way, as the horror of the Rwandan genocide against the Tutsi
reinforced the wrong of violating immigration law.
Keywords
border control, international criminal law, performativity, race, Rwanda
Introduction
It is 11 March 2019 and I’m sitting in the United States District Court in Boston,
Massachusetts. It’s a criminal trial. The family of the accused are seated to my right, well
dressed, huddled together. They are the only black people in the room, with the exception
of one of the 12 jurors. Suits, white hair and leather law books order the spacious court-
room. The charge is immigration fraud and perjury with a potential prison sentence of up
to eight years. The jurors are listening intently to the white academic on the stand, an expert
Corresponding author:
Nicola Palmer, Dickson Poon School of Law, King’s College London, Strand, London, WC2R 2LS, UK.
Email: nicola.palmer@kcl.ac.uk
1009157TCR0010.1177/13624806211009157Theoretical CriminologyPalmer
research-article2021
Article
420 Theoretical Criminology 25(3)
witness brought by the prosecution to explain the context of the 1994 genocide against the
Tutsi in Rwanda. The central issue for the court is whether the accused Jean Léonard
Teganya lied about his alleged involvement in the genocide, in his application for asylum.
This municipal prosecution for immigration offences based on allegations of involve-
ment in an international crime fits into an emerging pattern around the world (Bolhuis
et al., 2014; Rikhof, 2017). Focusing on cases against Rwandan nationals in the US
draws attention to seven similar decisions. Four individuals have been deported to
Rwanda after completing their sentences, and three others, namely Prudence Kantengwa,
Beatrice Munyenyezi and Gervais Ngombwa, are still serving time in US jails for immi-
gration offences with sentences of up to 15 years’ imprisonment. Looking beyond the
US, an independently generated dataset (Palmer, 2020) shows at least 120 cases under-
taken in 20 countries that have addressed the immigration status, extradition, deportation
or trial of individuals suspected of involvement in the Rwandan genocide. These have
included the high-profile cases of genocide suspects Léon Mugesera and Jean-Claude
Henri Seyoboka deported from Canada to Rwanda and, among others, the extraditions of
Charles Bandora from Norway and Jean-Baptiste Mugimba and Jean Claude Iyamuremye
from the Netherlands. Thirty-six of these cases have been decided on the basis of immi-
gration law. Teganya’s case is thus one among many. It is part of an expanding set of
legal activities and offers the opportunity for a close reading of what is at stake when
international criminal law (ICL) is re-nationalized into domestic immigration law. To do
so, this article deploys performative theory, to examine how ICL and immigration law
worked together to further animate the ‘criminalized migrant’ as the central subject of
border control (Bowling and Westenra, 2020: 164).
Drawing on courtroom observations, a close reading of the legal transcripts and the
media coverage of the Teganya trial, this article examines the collisions between express-
ing the wrong of genocide and the invocation of this international crime as a means to
secure carceral control of borders. It shows how the language and legal categories used
in the trial helped to bring into being the racialized ‘criminal migrant’. The article argues
that the legal relationships between ICL and immigration law can be usefully understood
as performative (Butler, 1997a, 1999). Together these legal regimes reinforce and com-
municate particular migrant identities that are infused with racially informed notions of
who violates ICL law and where these types of crimes are committed.
The article is structured in three parts. It opens with a methodological reflection on
writing on race as a white scholar, its necessity and its necessary constraints. In doing so,
this section highlights how, despite many years of collaborating with Rwandan col-
leagues working and writing on the country, my research and access to that Boston court-
room are still racially inflected. This recognition establishes the need to make visible the
relevance of race while at the same time deploying the resultant analysis to pursue an
explicitly anti-racist agenda.
The second part draws on performative theory to examine the collisions and compat-
ibilities between ICL and immigration law in Teganya’s case. It shows how immigration
offences offer a route through which international crimes are rendered legally relevant in
the US and highlights how Teganya’s alleged involvement in the 1994 genocide against
the Tutsi is given centre stage in the trial. It argues that the performative collision between
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