By César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández and Christopher N. Lasch The virulent tone of immigration rhetoric that propelled Donald Trump to the presidency has come to Colorado. A Republican state legislator proposes to bar cities or local governmental units from limiting their cooperation with ICE. And then he goes where even President Trump hasn’t dared: criminalizing the very act of voting in favor of limiting cooperation with ICE. The proposal, House Bill 17-1134, titled the “Colorado Politician Accountability Act,” is a constitutional train wreck. If our students submitted this for a course, [...]
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 [...]
Arizona on verge of increasing jail time for migrants
After a few years out of the limelight, Arizona legislators appear on the verge of reigniting the state’s notorious climate toward migrants. A subtle change to the state’s criminal sentencing statutes promises to substantially increase the amount of time in prison certain migrants face. The proposal, Senate Bill 1377, targets migrants who are in the country in violation of a small number of federal immigration crimes, most notably Immigration and Nationality Act § 275 and 276, illegal entry and illegal reentry respectively. SB 1377 would limit a sentencing judge’s power to tailor the [...]
DHS asks for more detention beds, alternatives to detention, prosecutors, & drones
[While all of the information below is accurate regarding the Obama Administration's FY 2016 budget request, it turns out we're already in 2016. I should have written about the FY 2017 budget request (and meant to), but in a late-night blogging oversight I instead wrote about year-old material. My apologies. I'll try to get to the FY 17 budget request next week. I'll leave the FY 16 analysis up as a comparison.] In the last budget request he will make to Congress, President Obama hopes to boost the Department of Homeland Security’s detention network, increase the number of people supervised [...]
New Efforts to Push Private Prisons Out of Immigration Detention
By Mariela Olivares As regular readers of this blog and of César’s work know, the history of mass incarceration is one mired in political and societal efforts to criminalize drug-related offenses, to lengthen prison sentences and to increase the severity of punishment for relatively minor offenses. These general criminal justice system reform efforts, which gained greatest steam in the 1980’s, resulted in an incredible increase in the number of people incarcerated in the United States. As we also know, the concomitant effect on immigration detention was also unprecedented. Although [...]
Prison reform’s blind spot
By visiting a federal prison last week—the first time a sitting president has ever crossed the barbed wire threshold—President Obama amplified calls for prison reform like few others could do. His televised walk through the El Reno penitentiary illustrated the stark reality millions of people live in jails and prisons throughout the United States. Standing in front of a long row of cell doors, the President’s honest assessment of his own youthful drug use—and his vocalized assumption that many of the reporters in the press pool probably share similar criminal pasts—was a refreshing reminder [...]
Pushing Europe to protect migrant workers
By Alan Desmond As we approach the 25th anniversary of the UN International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families (ICMW), Migrants Matter, a group of postgraduate students and young professionals concerned with the treatment of migrants in Europe, is calling on Dimitris Avramopoulos, the EU Commissioner for Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship, to support ratification of the ICMW by EU Member States. Adopted by the UN General Assembly on 18 December 1990, the ICMW is one of the ten core international human rights instruments. [...]
Taking the Fight to the State Legislature: Small Changes, Big Impacts for Non-Citizens
By Michael Mehr In California, as in many other states, a defendant charged with a minor drug offense, is offered Deferred Entry of Judgment: plead guilty to the offense, complete a diversion program, and upon successful completion criminal charges are dismissed. The defendant is told the “arrest will be deemed never to have occurred” and that the plea can never be used to deny her any “benefit.” But the reality is far different: under federal immigration law, a plea of guilty paired with any form of restraint or punishment, including completion of a diversion program, is a “conviction” for [...]