“Noncitizens also have constitutional rights”: Harvard professors take on immigration policy
In July 2026, FXB Director of Research Professor Jacqueline Bhabha spoke with Professor Kathryn Sikkink to discuss human rights and U.S. immigration policy for the first “Faculty Lounge” conversation at the Harvard Kennedy School. This article originally appeared on the Harvard Kennedy School website.
By Kate Selker
July 14, 2026
In America today, explains Harvard Professor Jacqueline Bhabha, there are millions of children whose parents have a complicated immigration status—who may have lived and worked in the United States for decades while overstaying a visa, for instance. The government’s current approach to these families, Bhabha argues, is irresponsible.
“These are American children who can’t sleep at night because they’re so worried their parents will be picked up,” she says. “How inhuman is it for a government to impose that on millions of American children, to say nothing of the millions of non-American children similarly traumatized by this administration’s extreme policies? They live with this pool of fear, which will affect them for years, if not for life.”
Bhabha is a professor of the practice of health and human rights at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the Jeremiah Smith, Jr. Lecturer in Law at Harvard Law School, and an adjunct lecturer in public policy at HKS. She joined in conversation with Kathryn Sikkink, Ryan Family Professor of Human Rights Policy at HKS, to discuss human rights and immigration policy in the United States today. Their dialogue is the first in a new series, Faculty Lounge, which allows readers to be a “fly on the wall” of a candid discussion between faculty members on consequential topics.
Given Sikkink’s focus on human rights, she shared concerns not only about the nature of American immigration policy, but the rhetoric that fuels it. She pointed to an official White House website launched this spring with an outer-space theme that compared undocumented people (referred to in some legal contexts as “aliens”) to space aliens targeted for “abduction.”
The roots of human rights violations
“We know quite a lot about things that contribute to human rights violations,” Sikkink explained—such as war and authoritarianism.
“In addition to those big causes of human rights violations, there’s also dehumanization. This ‘aliens’ website is dehumanization in its purest form. [Scholars] who’ve written mainly on genocide and other mass atrocities, all of them point to dehumanization,” she said.
“Usually it uses animal imagery—like in Rwanda, where Tutsis were called ‘cockroaches.’ Sometimes it uses disease imagery—talking about a group as a ‘cancer’ that needs to be cut out of the body politic. In this case, they’re using this alien imagery and a play on words.”
Bhabha agreed.
“To add to Kathryn’s list of factors that lead to human rights violations: it’s the big-picture issues she mentioned, like conflict and authoritarianism, but it’s also pervasive discrimination. This includes violations of basic rights to respect for family life…separating children from parents, categorizing people on the basis of their skin color, or their accent, or their last name—these are exactly the kinds of abuses international law has tried to prevent for three quarters of a century.”
Other factors that contribute to human rights violations, Bhabha said, include “the everyday racism that is now so explicit in American political discourse—the oft-repeated claim that Mexicans are rapists, or that people come from ‘shithole countries’ and shouldn’t be here. That kind of rhetoric fuels the abuse of power.”
And that abuse of power, she says, travels from “the White House down to the policeman on the street, the border control agent at the airport immigration desk, the ICE agent.”
The rights of all residents
The professors pointed out that even if undocumented immigrants don’t have legal status to remain in the United States, they do have certain important rights.
“Experts have long asserted that noncitizens also have constitutional rights. They can’t be tortured. Their homes can’t be searched without a warrant,” Bhabha said.
Some people without American citizenship, she explained, are “here lawfully because they are entitled to seek asylum, which is a right the U.S. has protected for decades. Even those who are undocumented—who’ve overstayed their visas or entered without detection—have some fundamental rights. You can’t just pick them up and torture them. You can’t just remove them without giving them some form of due process.”
Sikkink agreed.
“If you read the Constitution—and the Supreme Court has considered this on a number of occasions—you see that some rights are held only by citizens, but many are held by citizens and noncitizens alike,” she explained.
“Citizens are the only ones who get to vote and run for certain offices, of course, but many other rights refer to ‘persons,’ not ‘citizens.’ That wasn’t accidental. It was done on purpose to make clear that people residing here, whether or not they are citizens, have the right to due process, the right not to be tortured, and the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty.”
All this, said Bhabha, is “jurisprudence that really flies in the face of what this administration is trying to do in its treatment of non-citizens.”
Acts of “humanization”
Bhabha and Sikkink also point to moments of “humanization” in American society.
Sikkink noted the movements in support of immigrants in Minneapolis, Minnesota, this winter as the Trump administration sent thousands of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents to the city.
“One of the things people in Minneapolis did was to constantly think of their neighbors as neighbors: as fellow humans, as parents, as kids who needed to get to school.
They did what any neighbors would do. If people needed help, they bought groceries and delivered them. If kids needed to get to school, there were webs of drivers whose job it was to pick up the kids who needed rides…if you ask Americans, they want to be good neighbors. They appreciate people in their community,” Sikkink said.
“One aspect of humanization is seeing the whole person, not just the color of their skin or their passport,” Bhabha added.
“People who work in this country pay taxes, for the vast majority. For decades we’ve known that many noncitizens, including undocumented people, contribute to the state coffers more than they take out. They’re often not claiming pensions, and they often arrive already educated, so they’re not drawing on an education budget, but they’re paying taxes.
They really are our neighbors. Many noncitizens we share our cities and towns with do essential work, as we saw during COVID…their humanity and generosity need to be acknowledged.”
Calls for reform
Even as Sikkink and Bhabha critiqued the Trump administration’s approach to undocumented immigration, they acknowledged immigration policy is a challenge.
“I don’t think anyone would say the immigration system works perfectly, or even particularly well,” Bhabha said.
She suggested three steps that could lead to reform. First, she said, the nation needs a well-regulated border with well-trained staff.
“If you keep cutting back the budget and appointing people with no training—people dealing with complex and delicate situations, including unaccompanied minors—that’s not how you create a well‑regulated border,” she said. “You have to invest, just as you invest in tax collection, road repair after a harsh winter, or maintaining plumbing systems. It costs money.”
Second, she said, immigration policy should respect human rights and acknowledge the country’s labor needs, which are often met informally through undocumented immigrants.
“On human rights, for example, there is the right to family reunification. If someone is here legally, it’s inhumane to separate them for long periods from their spouse or minor children. That’s a violation of basic rights. You can’t say you’ll discriminate against people from certain countries or those who earn less than a certain amount—that’s not an ethical immigration policy,” she said.
And visas, she added, “shouldn’t just be just for computer wizzes, doctors, and Harvard professors, but also for plumbers, nannies, and manual laborers…have a properly staffed system that matches needs and demand, and don’t charge a fortune for visas that people can’t afford. Those are two huge steps toward improving the system.
Finally, she said, the United States should adopt a practice through which people who have lived without legal status in the United States for many years can be on a pathway to a green card.
“If someone has been in the country, say, 10 years, has not broken the law, and has not been targeted for deportation, they can’t be that dangerous,” Bhabha explained. “Their continued residence should be recognized.”
Meeting communities’ needs
Bhabha pointed out that part of the tension around immigration in the United States and worldwide is about resources. By attending to communities’ needs and offering key resources, governments can lessen that tension.
“When immigrants and refugees arrive, they often settle in poor communities, understandably, as they don’t come with many resources. These communities are already struggling, with overstretched health clinics and local services,” she explained.
“Most Americans’ first reaction to people in need is generous and welcoming. But if, over time, their quality of life deteriorates and authorities do nothing to alleviate negative effects, that welcome will dissipate.”
Ultimately, she added, “no country or city stays the same forever…our social capital is constantly changing. But you have to invest in that; you can’t assume it’s friction‑free.”
Sikkink added that immigrants can become a scapegoat for other problems in society.
“We have people in America living hard lives. Some groups have seen no real wage increase in twenty years. Now inflation is rising, and life is getting even harder. There will always be an attempt to play the immigration card when there are other problems, and we should resist that,” she explained.
Bhabha agreed. “I think you’re one hundred percent right about that.”
[The views expressed are those of the individuals cited and do not reflect the views of Harvard University.]