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Immigration policing blurs fiction and reality

Back in 1954, the Eisenhower administration shut down its last remaining long-term immigration holding facility, an immigration prison on Ellis Island. The attorney general at the time, Herbert Brownwell, said that closing the off-shore prison—with an ironic view of the Statue of Liberty—would stand as an example of the “humane administration of the immigration laws.” Hard as it is to believe, the United States teetered on the verge of abolishing immigration prisons. Yet in the decades since this missed chance, a new consensus has emerged. Even today, something that liberals and [...]

Posted by César on October 29, 2019 on 4:00 am Leave a Comment
Filed Under: border militarization, commentaries

Immigration crime prison population 2000-2016

Over the summer, the Trump administration made headlines worldwide when it decided to separate families arriving at the border while criminally prosecuting the parents. This was an especially cruel instance of using the bludgeon of criminal law to target migration. But it wasn’t the first time this happened. Across the Southwest, criminal prosecution of migration has been a common feature in federal courthouses for many years. Many of these individuals are sentenced to time-served, meaning they do little jail time beyond what they spend behind bars awaiting prosecution. Government data that [...]

Posted by César on October 2, 2018 on 4:00 am 1 Comment
Filed Under: commentaries, FOIA, illegal entry, illegal reentry, imprisonment, statistics

Trump is an invitation to stop holding migrants to a double-standard

From the day he launched his presidential run, Donald Trump has been vocal about the dangers that criminals pose. But as the number of his associates convicted of federal crimes grows, a vivid double-standard appears. If migrants commit crimes, it is an existential threat to the nation. If his friends do, it is irrelevant or unjust. When Iowa police announced that a migrant led them to the body of college student Mollie Tibbetts, it took the White House less than a day to tweet a slick video tying migrants to crime. The same day, President Trump distributed his own video: “We have [...]

Posted by César on September 26, 2018 on 4:00 am 1 Comment
Filed Under: commentaries, obstruction of justice

Separating families is a choice

When President Obama announced Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, his administration’s policy of pushing young unauthorized migrants to the bottom of the immigration law-enforcement priority list, Republicans complained that focusing on some legal violations over others was equivalent to not enforcing the law. When Obama used his discretion to extend similar protections to parents of United States citizens, Republican legislators successfully took to the courts to block him. Within days of entering the White House, President Trump issued an executive order proclaiming, “We cannot [...]

Posted by César on July 31, 2018 on 8:35 am Leave a Comment
Filed Under: commentaries, illegal entry, illegal reentry, Prosecutorial discretion, statistics

Under Trump, ICE No Longer Recommends Release for Immigrants in Detention

Kate Evans & Robert Koulish In summer 2018, the Trump administration ratcheted up its immigration enforcement and detention practices with new family separation and forced detention, as part of its “zero tolerance” strategy aimed at deterring asylum applicants from exercising their asylum rights under the 1980 Refugee Act. Part of its effort was to manipulate the immigration risk detention tool, known as the risk classification assessment, or RCA. The risk tool was designed during the Obama administration to reduce the arbitrary detention of immigrants by tailoring it to risk. A new [...]

Posted by César on July 26, 2018 on 4:00 am Leave a Comment
Filed Under: bond, commentaries, FOIA, guest blogger, imprisonment, mandatory detention

Undercutting Naturalization

By Patricia M. Corrales I joined the INS, then part of the Department of Justice, in March of 1995. Within weeks of becoming a trial attorney, my boss and mentor, assigned me a very unique case representing the agency in a federal case involving the naturalization of Filipino war veterans. Some Filipino nationals, during World War II, had shown their loyalty to this country by serving in the Armed Forces of the United States, and were promised naturalization. When some of these Filipino war veterans filed petitions for naturalization, INS denied their petitions claiming their names could [...]

Posted by César on July 18, 2018 on 12:30 am Leave a Comment
Filed Under: citizenship, commentaries, guest blogger

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 [...]

Posted by César on June 22, 2018 on 12:30 am Leave a Comment
Filed Under: border militarization, commentaries, imprisonment

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 [...]

Posted by César on June 19, 2018 on 12:30 am Leave a Comment
Filed Under: commentaries, guest blogger, right to counsel

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The information contained on these pages must not be considered legal advice and does not create an attorney-client relationship. This work by www.crImmigration.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.