Sarah Tosh

Sarah Tosh joined the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminal Justice in 2019 after receiving her PhD in Sociology from the Graduate Center, CUNY. Her research examines the punitive intersections between drug, crime, and immigration policy in the United States. At Rutgers, she teaches courses on inequality in criminal justice, migration and deportation, drugs and society, and the sociology of deviance. Dr. Tosh’s book, The Immigration Law Death Penalty: Aggravated Felonies, Deportation, and Legal Resistance was published in 2023 by New York University Press. From 2021-2023, she was the co-PI of a National Science Foundation-funded study of the "criminalization-to-deportation pipeline" in New York City. She currently leads a Rutgers-funded study of "crimmigration" advisal in public defense offices around the United States.

Publications:

• Article: David Brotherton and Sarah Tosh. 2025. “The Dialectics of Migration: Social Bulimia and the Deportation Pipeline in New York City.” The British Journal of Criminology. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azaf010
• Article: Lorena Avila and Sarah Tosh. 2024. “The Institutional Hearing Program and the Incarceration-to-Deportation Pipeline.” Critical Criminology 32(2), pp. 217-233. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-024-09783-3
• Book: Sarah Tosh. 2023. The Immigration Law Death Penalty: Aggravated Felonies, Deportation, and Legal Resistance. New York: New York University Press.

Media Appearances/Speaking Engagements:

• “Panel Discussion of Immigration Detention, Inc.: The Big Business of Locking Up Migrants.” Stony Brook University, September 10, 2025.
• “The Immigration Law Death Penalty: Aggravated Felonies, Deportation, and Legal Re-sistance.” Rutgers University-Newark, College of Criminal Justice, March 10, 2025.
• “Abolishing Immigration Detention: A Teach-In on the Elizabeth New Jersey Detention Center.” Princeton University, March 22, 2024.

Previous Organizations:

• Rutgers University-Camden
• The Graduate Center-City University of New York (CUNY)
• Boston University

Accomplishments:

• Book: Sarah Tosh. 2023. The Immigration Law Death Penalty: Aggravated Felonies, Deportation, and Legal Resistance. New York University Press.
• Co-Edited Special Issue: Sarah Tosh, Edwin Grimsley, and Nicholas Rodrigo. 2024. “The Criminalization-to-Deportation Pipeline in the United States.” Critical Criminology 32(2).
• NSF Grant: 2021-2023 National Science Foundation. Division of Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences, Law & Science Program. “Collaborative Research: The Criminal Deportation Pipeline in New York City.” Co-PI with David Brotherton, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY. ($371,967)

Upcoming projects:

• Forthcoming Book Chapter: Sarah Tosh. 2026. “How a Good Immigrant/Bad Immigrant Binary Fuels the Modern Deportation Regime.” In Elizabeth Detention Center: A Social History of Confinement in the Unit-ed States, 1993-2025, edited by Ulla Berg and Carolina Sanchez Boe. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
• Article in Progress: Sarah Tosh and Lorena Avila. “Immigration Advisal on Criminal Pleas for Non-Citizens: Assessing the Implementation of Padilla v. Kentucky”
• Article in Progress: Grimsley, Edwin and Sarah Tosh. “Broken Windows Policing and the Deportation of Black Immigrants: The Case of New York City.”

My work explores the reproduction of racial and social inequality through intertwining systems of drug, criminal justice, and immigration policy in the United States. In particular, I examine at the punitive "crimmigration" systems that funnel Black and Latinx non-citizens along a "pipeline" from criminalization to deportation – a pipeline rationalized by a false binary between "good" and "bad" immigrants that deems any immigrant with a criminal record undeserving and incorrigible. Using mixed research methods, with a focus on in-depth interviews and ethnographic observation, I identify specific policies, processes, and practices that link the criminal and immigration systems, and analyze their impacts on immigrants, families, and communities. Beyond punitive impacts, my work emphasizes intricate webs of intersectional activism and advocacy through which impacted communities harness the power of lawyers, non-profit organizations, and local policymaking processes to resist these systems' harsh, punitive, and unequal impacts.

Book talk on The Immigration Law Death Penalty: Aggravated Felonies, Deportation, and Legal Resistance (NYU Press, 2023) by Dr. Sarah Tosh

https://globalracialjustice.rutgers.edu/event/immigration-law-death-penalty-aggravated-felonies-deportation-and-legal-resistance