From family detention to family separation

Separating families, as a Trump administration policy now requires when migrants try to sneak into the United States, is certainly cruel. Forgotten in the ruckus dominating immigration debates since last month’s policy announcement is the Obama administration’s embrace of an equally troubling alternative: locking up migrant children alongside their mothers. Losing sight of common threads between family separation and family detention runs the risk of missing an opportunity to reimagine immigration policies. In early May, Trump’s Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that federal [...]

Trump’s family separation & detention executive order

Responding to the outcry over his administration’s policy of separating migrant families, President Trump signed an executive order today ostensibly limiting separation while simultaneously expanding family detention. The executive order explicitly links the alternative nightmares of family separation and detention. The executive order purports to end the family separation policy. Indeed, it claims that the administration’s policy is to “maintain family unity, including by detaining families.” To do that, the president ordered DHS to “maintain custody of alien families during the pendency [...]

The School to Deportation Pipeline

By Laila L. Hlass Last month, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos told Congress that local schools should have the freedom to decide whether to report undocumented students to immigration authorities. Although she has since stepped back her remarks, this sentiment is in line with President Trump’s pervasive attacks on immigrants. Trump has called immigrants rapists, gang members, and “animals.” Regarding migrant children, he said “they look so innocent. They’re not innocent.” Like DeVos, Trump’s high-ranking appointees have sounded much the same theme: Attorney General Sessions called [...]

The Perversity of External Immigration Enforcement

Alexander Sager On March 25, 2018, Palm Sunday, the Viacrucis del Migrante [The Migrants’ Way of the Cross] set out from Tapachula, Chiapas toward Tijuana. The approximately 1,000 Central American migrants traveled together for safety, as well as to draw attention to Mexican and U.S. policies that undermine the right to asylum. The 2018 Caravan drew significantly more attention than had previous years’ efforts. Sadly, much of the attention was from the Trump administration and right-wing media. President Trump (predictably) voiced his ire through a tweet: “Mexico is doing very little, if [...]

Immigration crime cases fill federal courts in 2017

Immigration crime has become a common feature of federal court dockets across the United States. I previously wrote that in fiscal year 2016 there were 68,314 defendants prosecuted for federal immigration crimes (see similar accounts of 2012 and 2010). Approximately 10,000 fewer defendants had their cases disposed of in the 2017 fiscal year, which might explain a small drop in immigration-related imprisonment, but the overall trend as similar. In the fiscal year that began under President Obama and ended under President Trump, there were more defendants prosecuted for immigration crimes before [...]

Crimmigration and Race

By Allison Crennen-Dunlap “The Age of Nations has passed. Now, unless we wish to perish we must shake off our old prejudices and build the earth.” Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Human Energy 37 (1969). Writing in 1969, dissident Jesuit priest and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin envisioned a radical future toward which humanity was building—a future beyond nations and divisions in which all human beings could share as equals in their common dignity. Sadly, humanity has not lived up to Teilhard’s vision, beautiful as it was. In Race, Criminal Justice, and Migration Control (2017), [...]

Abolish the ICE Prison Complex

Locking up migrants fighting to stay in the United States is permissible, the Supreme Court reiterated in February. The Court’s ruling mocks justice, but isn’t a big surprise. The federal laws under the Court’s consideration breathe life into a mean-spirited immigration law enforcement regime that holds tightly to the misguided belief that migrants pose a threat that prisons are best suited to extinguish. In Jennings v. Rodriguez, five justices overturned the decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit allowing migrants detained by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement [...]

4 ICE prisoners dead so far in FY18

Seven months into the federal government’s fiscal year and so far at least four people saw their final day in ICE’s custody. The four deceased were all men: Kamyar Samimi, 64; Yulio Castro-Garrido, 33; Luis Ramirez-Marcano, 59; and Gourgen Mirimanian, 54. All but Mr. Ramirez-Marcano were held in private facilities prior to their deaths. The four deaths through April 30 put ICE on track to come well within its typical annual death toll. ICE’s recent uptick in the number of detainees held daily, however, suggests that we might see an increase in the second half of the fiscal year. As the [...]