Obama’s crimmigration legacy

Next week, President Obama vacates the White House. He takes with him eight years of accomplishments on a wide range of fronts. Throughout his two terms, I have devoted considerable energy to criticizing his shortcomings and, when appropriate, noting the ways in which he has improved migrants’ lives. As Donald Trump takes command of the Executive Branch, the long process of reviewing President Obama’s crimmigration legacy begins. President Obama presided over the most consistently heavy-handed immigration policing practices in the nation’s history. Under his watch, ICE detained hundreds of [...]

Abolishing immigration prisons: Lessons from Italy

Immigration imprisonment is seemingly intractable. The United States Marshals Service imprisons almost 100,000 people suspected of a federal immigration crime. The Bureau of Prisons holds roughly 25,000 convicted federal immigration offenders on a given day. And of course, ICE uses the $2 billion it receives for civil immigration detention to hold approximately 400,000 people waiting to learn whether they will be allowed to remain. Meanwhile, private prison corporations, county governments, and countless financial investors are attuned to the profits that come with locking up migrants. The [...]

Thanksgiving break

As a newly-minted lawyer several years ago, many of my first clients were Jamaican citizens who had spent many years in the United States, usually as lawful permanent residents. Caught up in heavy-handed policing of illicit drugs, they were caught along the Northeast and transported to remote immigration prisons in South Texas. That's where I met them. I have learned a lot since then, but the experience of representing clients locked up for nothing more than potentially violating immigration law has stayed with me. This week is the perfect opportunity to give thanks for the great privilege [...]

The Age of Trump

We are one week into the age of Trump. Two months remain before he takes office. A man who campaigned on a platform of rhetorical violence will soon occupy the highest political office in the United States. Already the effect has been unmistakable. Incidents of hateful attacks have risen sharply. Among the millions of people who fit a description that Trump ridiculed or demonized, fear has become palpable. I have seen the tears and heard the despair. I have felt the threat seep into my daily experience. The day after the election, I awoke feeling a sense of despair. Not because my favored [...]

Reflections on a Donald Trump Presidency

By Linus Chan Bearing witness to sorrow, pain and injustice has always been part of the package deal of being an immigration attorney. Immigration law is diverse, rich and an example of how to define what our country's values are. Deciding who can be our neighbors, co-workers, teachers, and family often requires us to articulate our vision of the United States and how it is to remain a shining light on a hill. I represent non-citizens detained by immigration officials and who face removal from our country and exile from their homes and family. Many of my clients are those people [...]

Bipartisan Immigration Imprisonment

Top Obama administration officials have made much of their concern about the country’s outsized prison population. In 2015, President Obama famously visited a federal penitentiary, the first sitting president to ever do so. In 2013, then-Attorney General Eric Holder championed sentencing reforms targeting low-level drug offenders. And Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates recently announced that the Justice Department would substantially reduce its reliance on private prison operators. But at the same time, the Obama administration has arrested and imprisoned a historically unprecedented [...]

The Demonization of “Criminal Aliens”

By Beth Caldwell In the context of the current presidential debate, the hate that invoking the term “criminal alien” evokes for a large segment of the U.S. population is tangible. In his immigration speech in Arizona, Donald Trump repeated the term “criminal alien” over and over again. Mike Pence followed suit in the October 4 vice presidential debate, using the term three times in a relatively brief response to a question about immigration policy. But the Trump campaign is not alone in invoking the “criminal alien” term. President Obama too has framed his immigration policies using this [...]

Retelling migration in the era of global capitalism

The pattern is astonishingly clear. Every year, the U.S. Marshals Service books into its custody almost 100,000 people suspected of entering the United States without the federal government’s permission. Every year, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency confines over 400,000 people waiting to learn whether they will be allowed to remain in the United States. Every year, private prison corporations and local governments reap hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue for locking up people suspected to have violated some tenant of migration control. Every year, thousands of people die [...]