Almost seven years and over 600 updates ago, I launched this blog with the goal of creating a one-stop resource about crimmigration law developments. A year later I started teaching about crimmigration law with the goal of training the next generation of lawyers to appreciate the subtlety and importance of understanding how criminal law and immigration law intersect. At about the same time I began writing legal scholarship with the hope of tracking and shaping this emerging area of law.
Today I am thrilled to announce that those countless hours of work have coalesced into Crimmigration Law, my first book. Appearing just shy of a decade after Juliet Stumpf famously coined the term, Crimmigration Law offers the first doctrinal mapping of how criminal law and immigration law have become so deeply intertwined in recent decades that it is often difficult to identify where one area of law ends and the other begins. As the U.S. Supreme Court concluded after taking note of this trend in the landmark Padilla v. Kentucky, “[t]he landscape of federal immigration law has changed dramatically over the last 90 years.”
Reflecting the legal amalgamation that is crimmigration law, Crimmigration Law is divided into three parts. Part One focuses on the immigration court system with chapters on crime-based removal, relief from removal, and civil immigration detention. Part Two turns to criminal proceedings with chapters on the all-important right to counsel as well as separate treatments of federal immigration crimes and state immigration crimes. Finally, Part III discusses law enforcement tactics that either apply only in the crimmigration law context or that do so in some unique fashion.
Like this blog, Crimmigration Law is intended to guide the people who are working in the trenches as well as those searching for a deeper understanding of the legal aspects of how criminal law and immigration law affect one another. Published by the American Bar Association, the book dives deeply into legal doctrine that affects migrants’ lives and the work of the attorneys whose knowledge guides them through high stakes labyrinths. Written by the law professor who I am, it contextualizes legal doctrine into historical trends and identifies anomalies that dot crimmigration law.
At bottom, my goal in writing Crimmigration Law is to help crimmigrationistas in the courtrooms, newsrooms, and policymaking arenas—the people who read this blog—to better understand how notions of criminality and immigration status walk hand-in-hand. My hope is that this will help them—you—alter crimmigration law’s future.
You can find information about purchasing a copy here. For information about group discounts or to arrange for me to talk about the book in your community, send me an email or get in touch with me on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.
Find this information useful? Learn more from Crimmigration Law, César’s just-released book available from the American Bar Association here.
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