Leticia Miranda

Double Punishment

Seth Wessler, research associate for the Applied Research Center, investigates the double punishment of immigrants by the criminal justice and immigration enforcement systems through the story of one family who was torn apart after their loved one was deported for a small drug charge.

An excerpt from “Double Punishment,” a part of a ColorLines series entitled Torn Apart by Deportation:

In 1996, immigration courts were suddenly stripped of the power to consider a person’s full situation. It no longer mattered that they had children or had been in the U.S. almost all their lives as legal permanent residents. For immigrants found guilty of crime, deportation became the mandatory result of their conviction.

Now, anyone who is not a citizen can be deported even if convicted of a relatively minor misdemeanor and even if it happened many years before. By broadening the number of crimes that trigger mandatory deportation—called “aggravated felonies” in immigration nomenclature—the 1996 laws has pushed hundreds of thousands of immigrants who have already served time in prison into detention and deportation.

Read the rest of the story here at ColorLines.com.

Posted at 12:27 PM, Oct 23, 2009 in ColorLines Features | Permalink | View Comments