crimmigration.com

The intersection of criminal law and immigration law

Archive

After regularly updating crimmigration.com from January 2009 until November 2022, I have stopped doing so. I hope you continue to benefit from the blog as an archive. For up-to-date information about my work, visit ccgarciahernandez.com. – César

Living in a “Border Patrol nation”

In February 2013, the Police Executive Research Forum, a highly-respected research organization led by prominent law enforcement officials from throughout the country, recommended that Border Patrol officers stop shooting at people doing nothing more dangerous than throwing rocks, that they stop putting themselves in the path of fleeing vehicles, and that they be instructed that deadly force is never justified only to protect property. Despite having commissioned the PERF’s study, the Border Patrol kept its existence secret for about a year. When word of PERF’s work began to leak, the Border [...]

Latina/o immigrant involvement in violent crime

Despite the oft-repeated claims that immigrants commit more crime than the native-born, a developing body of criminological research indicates that the opposite is true: immigrants tend to commit less crime than the native-born. A couple of articles that I recently came across bolster this conclusion. In Incorporating Ethnic-Specific Measures of Immigration in the Study of Lethal Violence, Jacob I. Stowell and Ramiro Martinez, Jr. examine homicide data in Miami, a city with large Latina/o populations. 13 Homicide Studies 315 (2009). They conclude that “at least in the city of Miami, Latino [...]

Dog whistle crimmigration

Crimmigration law, this blog’s readers know quite well, relies on a presumption that immigrants are especially prone to criminality. Reams of research suggest that’s not true (see, e.g., here and here. Numerous studies indicate that immigrant communities actually experience less crime than non-immigrant communities (see, e.g., here and here). This despite the fact that young men—the most likely people to engage in crime—are overrepresented in immigrant populations. What then explains the heavy reliance on criminal law enforcement practices to police immigration law that’s emblematic of [...]

The Immigrant and Miranda

It’s no longer news that migrants frequently find themselves being prosecuted for federal immigration crimes. Illegal entry and illegal reentry regularly top the list of most prosecuted and convicted federal offenses. Meanwhile, DHS makes much of its reliance on local law enforcement officials to identify potentially removable individuals. Programs like Secure Communities and 287(g) have become part of the public conversation about crimmigration law even if other local-state-federal initiatives like the Criminal Alien Program and the Criminal Alien Removal Initiative remain largely [...]

Defining due process limits on mandatory immigration detention

Farrin R. Anello Recent news reports and studies have shed new light on the massive scope of the United States’ deportation regime and its destructive impact on families and communities. Even as President Obama calls for a review of deportation policies, his administration continues to lock up huge numbers of people during their removal proceedings and appeals. Whereas people in criminal proceedings cannot be detained without an individualized hearing to assess danger and flight risk, many people in the removal system are held for months or even years without bond hearings. Since Congress [...]

Scholar’s Sidebar: Creating Crimmigration

Crimmigration is now a fact of life and law in the United States. It is hard to deny that the consequences for migrants of getting caught up in the criminal justice system have never been greater. Every day unprecedented numbers of people are criminally prosecuted for having violated immigration law. Every night tens of thousands of migrants are holed up behind bars in a county jail or stand-alone immigration prison waiting to learn whether they will be allowed to remain in the United States. It is equally difficult deny that immigration law enforcement and criminal law enforcement have [...]

Mi Media Naranja: Immigration Law’s Impact on Mixed-Status Couples

By April M. Schueths “I feel like I’ve changed her life… I feel like I’ve screwed her life up,” Joel laments head in hands, fighting back the tears. Joel, a Mexican immigrant who is undocumented, is facing at least a ten year unlawful presence ban from the U.S. He planned on staying in the U.S. for just a few years to earn some money, but then he met Alyssa, “She’s my right hand, mi media naranja” (my other orange half or soul mate). When Alyssa, a U.S. citizen, married Joel over ten years ago, they gave little thought to federal laws. They were both musicians and met in their church [...]

Crimmigration in the European Union: The case of immigration detention

By Izabella Majcher For over a decade U.S immigration scholars and practitioners have observed a growing convergence between criminal justice and migration control systems. Regular posts at the crImmigration.com blog document the spread of this phenomenon in the U.S. This post, which builds on the author’s Global Detention Project working paper “Crimmigration” in the European Union through the Lens of Immigration Detention, aims to give some insights into how the phenomenon of crimmigration has influenced the European Union (EU) legal system. Arguably, immigration detention represents the [...]