Deportation Of Criminal Aliens Case Essay
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Deportation Of Criminal Aliens Case Essay
Federal immigration law permits deportation of noncitizens for a variety of crimes. The list, once limited to serious crimes like rape and aggravated assault, has expanded over the years to include much lesser crimes, including shoplifting, tax evasion, and most recently, illegal entry. There has been a 100% increase in federal prosecutions since 2003, and a 37% increase between 2008 and 2009, with 2010 reaching an all-time high in the deportation of criminal aliens (Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse [TRAC], 2010). The federal government justifies this program as a public-safety mea- sure, but in fact illegal entry was the lead charge in the vast majority of these cases, which now make up more than half of all federal criminal prosecutions. As the number of deportation-eligible crimes has grown, procedural guarantees and grounds for human- itarian relief have been reduced. At least 20% of those deported are legal residents, many convicted of petty crimes (Human Rights Watch, 2009).
Race is implicated in the deportation of criminal aliens. Human Rights Watch reported that over a 10-year period, among deportees with criminal convictions (often for illegal entry), Mexican-origin residents were vastly overrepresented, at 78.2% of the total. (Mexicans represent only 27.9% of the foreign-born population in the United States.) This disproportion is likely to increase with the “zero tolerance” approach the federal government inaugurated in 2005. Under Operation Streamline, every person caught crossing illegally can be charged criminally. Five federal district courts, each located in a state bordering Mexico, handle most of these cases, accepting plea bargains in a manner that one observer labeled a “virtual kangaroo court” (Blumenthal, 2010).
- Summary
The impact of these federal initiatives has been dramatic. The Department of Homeland Security reports that it apprehended 613,000 foreign nationals in 2009, 86% of whom were natives of Mexico. Border apprehensions were down in comparison to earlier years, but interior enforcement was up, with 393,000 removals, the seventh consecutive record high; of this total, 72% were Mexican, and 7% each were from Guatemala and Honduras. Another 580,000 people accepted an offer to return “volun- tarily” to their countries of origin, mostly, that is, to Mexico or Central America. (Department of Homeland Security [DHS], 2010).
The dramatic increase in arrests and deportations has been accompanied by a steep rise in detention, largely because 1996 federal legislation created mandatory detention without bond for certain categories of immigrants. Between FY2003 and FY2007, the total number of noncitizens detained by ICE per year increased from 231,500 to 311,213 (Meissner & Kerwin, 2009). The intensified surveillance of Mexican and Central American immigrants over the past decade makes them more susceptible to detention than many other nationali- ties. A recent snapshot of ICE custody figures by the Migration Policy Institute reveals that of the 32,000 immigrants in ICE custody on January 25, 2009, 37% were from Mexico and 28% were from Central America (Kerwin & Lin, 2009, p. 11).
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Conclusion
Given their numbers—immigrants from Mexico are estimated to be slightly more than half the unauthorized population in the United States—it is not surprising that enforce- ment prioritizes Mexican immigrants. Under and around concerns about efficiency and law and order, however, preexisting racial categories, antipathies, and fears tend to reassert themselves. There is little that stands in the way of this process. Americans tend to believe that only citizens enjoy civil rights, including the right to be free of arbitrary treatment by government. Immigrants without legal status are conceived to have no rights at all. So from the southwest desert killing fields, to the streets Irving, Texas, and the meat-packing plants in Postville, Iowa, an implicit consensus has emerged that law enforcement must have a free hand. Evidence that the nation’s immigrants are not ter- rorists and are less involved in crime than native populations (see, for example, Reid, Weiss, Adelman, & Jaret, 2005) is irrelevant in this climate.
Treating unauthorized immigrants as quasi-criminals stigmatizes not only them but also all immigrants who “look Mexican.” A 2006 study using a “stereotype content model” found the most despised out-groups to be South Americans, Latinos, Mexicans, farm workers, and Africans. Undocumented migrants were the most despised of all, ranking so low as to imply that they were not perceived as fully human and “thus open- ing a door to the harshest, most exploitive, and cruelest treatment that human beings are capable of inflicting on one another” (Lee & Fiske, 2006, cited in Massey, 2007, p. 150). Arizona’s Latinos are feeling some of that sentiment in the wake of SB 1070 and other initiatives designed to create a hostile climate for unauthorized immigrants. Polls reveal a strong sense among Latinos in the state that they are under special scrutiny and that SB1070 has exposed “a deeper sense of racism” in the community (Gonzales, August 2, 2010; and see “Legacy of distrust,” 2010).
King and Smith (2005) argue that the political order in the United States was founded on, and remains, a product of two competing visions: a “white supremacist” normative order and an “egalitarian transformative” order. These authors assert that each of these orientations helps to shape immigration policy (p. 89). The federal government’s cur- rent approach to immigration enforcement, in our view, favors the white supremacist side by targeting Mexican immigrants, a group that has been the victim of past dis- crimination and harsh treatment, much of it legal in an earlier era of racial apartheid. Race thus continues to maintain an intimate relationship with the nation state, limit- ing options for a more effective, just, and humane policy.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
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Bios
Doris Marie Provine is a professor of justice studies at Arizona State University. A lawyer and political scientist, her most recent book is Unequal Under Law: Race and the War on Drugs (University of Chicago, 2007). Currently she is PI for an NSF-funded study of local policing of federal immigration law.
Roxanne Lynn Doty is an associate professor of politics and global studies at Arizona State University. Her most recent book is The Law Into Their Own Hands—Immigration and the Politics of Exceptionalism (University of Arizona Press, 2010).
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