Fong Yue Ting, 1893
Deportations happen every hour of every day in the United States, but "deportation" appears nowhere in the U.S. Constitution.
This is the incredible true story of how deportation came to be, how it almost never began, and a roadmap toward perhaps ending the practice forever.
Banishment follows Fong Yue Ting, the first immigrant in the United States to confront deportation, as he and a group of activists prepare to argue at the Supreme Court in 1893 that deportation—fundamentally—is unconstitutional. In a parallel documentary thread, Banishment will follow the evolution of immigration enforcement into its present high-tech dystopian form and the ways activists are keeping the dream of Fong Yue Ting alive and working toward a world without deportation.
