Austin Kocher | Making Sense of Immigration Policy in 2025

The Moynihan Institutes’ Program for Latin America and the Caribbean, in partnership with the Maxwell Dean’s Office, presents Austin Kocher Ph.D., research assistant professor from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.

The second Trump administration is rapidly and radically reshaping immigration policy. In less than three months, we’ve already seen the detention and deportation of green card holders, direct attacks on birthright citizenship, and the transfer of non-citizens to legal black holes in Guantánamo Bay and El Salvador.

Amid a barrage of announcements, this talk offers a clear and critical breakdown of major developments so far, tracking how these changes are unfolding across various institutions, being challenged in the courts and transforming on-the-ground enforcement. It also situates these moves within a broader push for extraordinary executive authority, showing how immigration is being used to blur legal boundaries, consolidate power and redefine national belonging.

In addition to attempting to bring some clarity to the chaos, Kocher will also share some tools and strategies for making sense of this fast-moving policy landscape as it continues to evolve.

Austin Kocher is a research assistant professor at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. As a political and legal geographer, Kocher’s research focuses on the politics and policies of the U.S. immigration and refugee system, including the geographies of federal, state and local immigrant policing; immigrant detention and deportation; and the role of immigration in accelerating political polarization.

This work is grounded in over a decade of qualitative and quantitative research on immigration and border enforcement across the country, including the U.S. South, the Midwest and the U.S.-Mexico border region. Kocher’s work also seeks to inform the national discourse on immigration through public scholarship, engagement with policy makers and the media, and working with nonprofit organizations in the Washington, D.C., area.