Immigration crime is neither unusual nor new. Federal law threatens imprisonment for a host of migration activity. Impersonating a United States citizen can lead to three years behind bars. Smuggling people into the country is too, and if anyone dies in the process it can even result in execution. Far less newsworthy, entering the country without the correct permission is also criminalized. Since 1929, federal law has prohibited entering the United States without the government’s authorization. Doing that once can result in six months imprisonment. Entering the United States without [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Risk assessment technology in migration control: tools for more objective decision-making?
By Tim Dekkers, Maartje van der Woude & Robert Koulish Migration control has seen an influx of information technologies in order to control mobilities. The traditional means of securing borders with walls, gates and border guards are not considered to be sufficient anymore or, as is the case at the internal borders of the European Union, legislation prevents the implementation of such measures. This poses a problem. Migration is increasingly viewed as a security issue and migrants as security threats, but freedom of movement benefits trade and tourism resulting in economic growth. EU [...]
Family detention to family separation and back
When Attorney General Sessions announced the Trump administration’s family separation policy, all eyes turned to the border. In countless reports, we saw parents brought to federal courts without a clue about their children’s whereabouts and kids winding up in federal custody suddenly alone. Soon enough, the family separation policy reverberated throughout the country. By the time President Trump signed an executive order supposedly backtracking, the administration’s next step was in view: families would be detained together. The trauma of family separation and family detention will be the [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Criminal prosecution data reveal longstanding practices & disparities
Federal prosecutors filed criminal charges against more migrants in May 2018 than at any other time since Donald Trump became president, newly-released government statistics obtained by the Transactional Access Records Clearinghouse reveal. But despite the administration’s “zero tolerance” approach, most people apprehended by Customs and Border Protection officers never found themselves in a criminal courtroom. Only about one-third of people apprehended in May outside of ports-of-entry were prosecuted criminally. As the report’s authors point out, this shows that the zero tolerance policy [...]
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