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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Plea Bargain Crisis For Noncitizens In Misdemeanor Court, Jason A. Cade
The Plea Bargain Crisis For Noncitizens In Misdemeanor Court, Jason A. Cade
Scholarly Works
This Article considers three factors contributing to a plea-bargain crisis for noncitizens charged with misdemeanors: 1) the expansion of deportation laws to include very minor offenses with little opportunity for discretionary relief from removal; 2) the integration of federal immigration enforcement programs with the criminal justice system; and 3) the institutional norms in non-federal lower criminal courts, where little attention is paid to evidence or individual equities and where bail and other process costs generally outweigh perceived incentives to fight charges. The Article contends that these factors increase the likelihood that a noncitizen’s low-level conviction will not reliably indicate guilt …
The Role Of Prosecutorial Discretion In Immigration Law, Shoba S. Wadhia
The Role Of Prosecutorial Discretion In Immigration Law, Shoba S. Wadhia
Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia
The concept of "prosecutorial discretion" appears in the immigration statute, agency memoranda and court decisions about select immigration enforcement decisions. Prosecutorial discretion extends to decisions about which offenses or populations to target; whom to stop, interrogate, and arrest; whether to detain or release a noncitizen; whether to initiate removal proceedings; and whether to execute a removal order; among other decisions. Similar to the criminal context, prosecutorial discretion in the immigration context is an important tool for achieving cost-effective law enforcement and relief for individuals who present desirable qualities or humanitarian circumstances. Yet there is a dearth of literature on the …
The Immigration Prosecutor And The Judge: Examining The Role Of The Judiciary In Prosecutorial Discretion Decisions, Shoba S. Wadhia
The Immigration Prosecutor And The Judge: Examining The Role Of The Judiciary In Prosecutorial Discretion Decisions, Shoba S. Wadhia
Journal Articles
Legal scholars and judges have long examined the role of judicial review in immigration matters, and also criticized the impacts of the “plenary power” doctrine and statutory deletions of judicial review for certain immigration cases. Absent from this scholarship is a serious examination of the judiciary’s role in immigration decisions involving prosecutorial discretion. I attribute this absence to both a silent concession that prosecutorial discretion decisions are automatically barred from judicial review because of the plain language of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA); the judicial review “exceptions” in the Administrative Procedures Act (APA), and the cases that analyze these …
My Great Foia Adventure And Discoveries Of Deferred Action Cases At Ice, Shoba S. Wadhia
My Great Foia Adventure And Discoveries Of Deferred Action Cases At Ice, Shoba S. Wadhia
Journal Articles
This Article describes my adventures in FOIA litigation and analyzes deferred action data collected informally by 24 ICE field offices between October 1, 2011, and June 30, 2012. This Article also offers recommendations for the agency on data collection, recordkeeping, and transparency in deferred action cases. Deferred action is a form of prosecutorial discretion that can be granted at any stage of the immigration enforcement process and historically has been applied both to people who meet group characteristics and on an individual basis in compelling humanitarian circumstances. The theory behind deferred action and prosecutorial discretion more generally is to enable …