Asian Americans compose a relatively small but growing portion of the prison populationboth nationwide and in California, with the number of AAPIs incarcerated in the US quadruplingfrom 2000 to 2010. Incarcerated Asian Americans face unique challenges, often having arrivedto the US as refugees fleeing war and genocide and struggling with intergenerational trauma,familial isolation and stigma, and a lack of culturally informed programs in prison. Thus, thisresearch project focuses on ethnic studies programs in California prisons, with a specific focuson Asian American studies programs. Constructed through interviews with participants andfacilitators of these programs, this project finds that ethnic studies programs have transformativeeffects on incarcerated people’s sense of self, personal healing, sense of community, and capacityas agents of change for themselves and others during and after incarceration.

“Crimmigration,” coined in 2006 by Professor Juliet Stumpf, refers to the merging ofcriminal and immigration law in the United States, particularly after 1980. Crimmigrationincludes both immigration-related punishments for non-American citizens convicted of crimesand immigration enforcement’s growing resemblance to criminal law enforcement. This paperexplores the historical development of crimmigration through laws such as the 1996Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act and Illegal Immigration Reform and ImmigrantResponsibility Act, as well as the massive expansion in ICE detention in recent decades. Itargues that Asian Americans have been disproportionately impacted by crimmigration due totheir historical marginalization at the intersection of non-citizen status, poverty, and violence.“Stuck in the middle” of the criminalization of immigration and unjust punishment ofimmigrants with criminal convictions, Asian American communities are uniquely impacted by acrimmigration system that marginalizes those seen as foreign and “other.”