Law Commons^™

Kill The Snitch: How Henriquez-Rivas Affects Asylum Eligibility For People Who Report Serious Gang Crimes To Law Enforcement, James Carr

Washington Law Review

In 2015, El Salvador became the murder capital of the world. Like its Central American neighbors, El Salvador has experienced a significant increase in gang violence during the past decade, as evidenced by its 2015 homicide statistics showing over 6,600 registered homicides in the country despite a population of only 6.3 million people. Rising crime rates and widespread gang influence are forcing many affected Central Americans to seek asylum in the United States. Individuals may qualify for asylum if they have a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social …

Challenging The "Criminal Alien" Paradigm, Angélica Cházaro

Articles

Deportation of so-called “criminal aliens” has become the driving force in U.S. immigration enforcement. The Immigration Accountability Executive Actions of late 2014 provide the most recent example of this trend. Even for immigrants’ rights advocates, conventional wisdom holds that if deportations must occur, “criminal aliens” should be the first to go. A voluminous “crimmigration” scholarship notes the ever-growing entwinement of criminal and immigration enforcement, but does not challenge this fundamental premise.

This Article calls for a rejection of the formulation of the “criminal alien”—the figure used to increasingly justify the preservation and expansion of a harmful immigration regime. It thus …