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Full-Text Articles in Law
Lessons Learned, Lessons Lost: Immigration Enforcement's Failed Experiment With Penal Severity, Teresa A. Miller
Lessons Learned, Lessons Lost: Immigration Enforcement's Failed Experiment With Penal Severity, Teresa A. Miller
Journal Articles
This article traces the evolution of “get tough” sentencing and corrections policies that were touted as the solution to a criminal justice system widely viewed as “broken” in the mid-1970s. It draws parallels to the adoption some twenty years later of harsh, punitive policies in the immigration enforcement system to address perceptions that it is similarly “broken,” policies that have embraced the theories, objectives and tools of criminal punishment, and caused the two systems to converge. In discussing the myriad of harms that have resulted from the convergence of these two systems, and the criminal justice system’s recent shift away …
Decriminalizing Border Crossings, Victor C. Romero
Decriminalizing Border Crossings, Victor C. Romero
Journal Articles
An international border crosser should only be deemed a criminal if the United States government can prove that, with requisite criminal intent, she engaged in an act aside from crossing the border that would constitute a crime. No longer should crossing the border be a strict liability criminal offense. Doing so will restore balance to the civil immigration system, conserve scarce enforcement resources to target truly criminal behavior, enhance our standing abroad, and help heal our racially-polarized discourse on immigration policy.