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Immigration Law and Criminal Justice
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Immigration Law and Criminal Justice

A special issue of Laws (ISSN 2075-471X).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 October 2015) | Viewed by 40020

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Ingrid V. Eagly

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
UCLA School of Law, 385 Charles E. Young Drive East, 1242 Law Building, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA
Interests: immigration law; criminal law; access to counsel; immigration detention

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Over the past decade, the traditional boundary between immigration law and criminal justice has begun to fade. This practice merger reflects the on-the-ground reality that the criminal justice system and immigration enforcement are now deeply intertwined.

Existing scholarship on the intersection of immigration law and criminal justice has focused primarily on how immigrants have been constructed as criminals within the increasingly criminalized immigration system. Far less work has been done to explore the complementary question of how this transformation in immigration governance influences the criminal justice system itself. For example, in the United States, noncitizens with criminal convictions are now being given the highest priority for deportation, and a record number of convicted criminals have been deported. The flexibility that civil immigration enforcement tools provide—such as policing without constitutional limits on racial profiling, arrests without warrants, detention without criminal charges, and deportation without jury trial—allows criminal prosecutors to borrow from the immigration enforcement regime in ways that can distort the normal procedural protections of the criminal system. Criminal prosecutors now bargain over the deportation outcomes of criminal convictions, police officers enforce immigration to varying degrees while patrolling neighborhoods, defense attorneys advise their criminal clients on immigration consequences, and criminal court judges effectively serve as immigration adjudicators. In the United States federal system, immigrants are criminally prosecuted for their migration transgressions. In state courts, crimes like driving without a license can serve as the functional equivalent of immigration crimes. In these ways, the criminal justice system itself has become transformed by immigration enforcement in ways that scholars are just beginning to understand.

This Special Issue is dedicated to encouraging more scholarly inquiry into how the criminal justice system is being shaped by the increasing enforcement of immigration laws. Do noncitizens experience the same type of criminal justice as citizens? What are the racial and class impacts of immigration’s influence on criminal adjudication? How should police, prosecutors, and public defenders respond to this new paradigm? What are the implications of the criminal-immigration merger for the application of procedural protections and judicial decisionmaking in the criminal adjudicatory process?

Prof. Ingrid V. Eagly
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All papers will be peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Laws is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Immigration enforcement
  • Criminal adjudication
  • Citizenship and migration
  • Deportation

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Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

247 KiB  
Article
Using Risk to Assess the Legal Violence of Mandatory Detention
by Robert Koulish
Laws 2016, 5(3), 30; https://doi.org/10.3390/laws5030030 - 5 Jul 2016
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 7298
Abstract
Immigration mandatory detention is a particularly harsh example of the structural violence embedded in immigration enforcement. It deprives liberty without bond for immigrants with prior crimes, and assigns many individuals to the harsh conditions associated with unnecessary and even wrongful detention. Mandatory detention [...] Read more.
Immigration mandatory detention is a particularly harsh example of the structural violence embedded in immigration enforcement. It deprives liberty without bond for immigrants with prior crimes, and assigns many individuals to the harsh conditions associated with unnecessary and even wrongful detention. Mandatory detention has been justified on the grounds that mandatory detainees are a danger to public safety. This article puts to the test this presumption of dangerousness among mandatory detainees, and finds, to the contrary, that immigrants with prior charges or convictions are no more dangerous than any other category of individuals in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody. Using the risk classification assessment (RCA) tool, which the author is the first to obtain through the Freedom of Information Act, the article contributes to the growing criticism of mandatory detention, providing evidence that many of those in mandatory detention should probably have never been detained. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Immigration Law and Criminal Justice)
223 KiB  
Article
Institutional Perceptions of Internal Security on the Relationship between “Sensitive Urban Zones” and Immigrant Criminality
by Maria João Guia and João Pedroso
Laws 2016, 5(2), 16; https://doi.org/10.3390/laws5020016 - 30 Mar 2016
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 4800
Abstract
The Portuguese social sciences literature has recently begun to make references to so-called “sensitive urban zones” (SUZs), described as vulnerable zones on the outskirts of big cities (e.g., Lisbon and Setúbal) where the population suffers from poor socioeconomic conditions. The same literature has [...] Read more.
The Portuguese social sciences literature has recently begun to make references to so-called “sensitive urban zones” (SUZs), described as vulnerable zones on the outskirts of big cities (e.g., Lisbon and Setúbal) where the population suffers from poor socioeconomic conditions. The same literature has also described these zones as being areas where migrants, especially people from Portuguese-speaking African countries (PALOP), and the unemployed tend to congregate. Since the beginning of the century, these areas have seen the number of foreigners of certain ethnicities rising, especially after the last mass regularization of migrants. At the same time, police forces describe these zones as being primary intervention areas, leading to the targeting of SUZ residents. Moreover, certain new migrant groups to Portugal (and to these SUZs) are over-represented in Portuguese prisons, suggesting some bias on the part of the judicial system, who have historically described SUZs as areas of growing criminality and drug trafficking. As such, SUZ residents are thought to need greater social control, and more visible and selective policing. Within this framework, police have institutionalized a perception of SUZs as crime ghettos in need of targeting, these perceptions being reinforced by documentation concerning the “rise” of new forms of violent crime from abroad. Therefore, it is important to study these perceptions of crime as contributing to the characterization of SUZs as being areas of criminality, and how such perceptions are reinforced by the legislature’s designation of SUZs as being areas requiring “special policing strategies”. This article will focus on the balance between the selectivity of police and the justice system in Lisbon’s SUZs, with an emphasis on issues pertaining to immigration and crime. Moreover, we consider wider societal perceptions of crime, where stereotypes are constructed around a vulnerable population as needing social policies. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Immigration Law and Criminal Justice)
181 KiB  
Article
Dissecting Marriage Fraud as a True Immigration Crime
by George S. Asllani
Laws 2016, 5(1), 8; https://doi.org/10.3390/laws5010008 - 24 Feb 2016
Viewed by 13566
Abstract
Marriage fraud is considered a true immigration crime in that not only does it carry penalties related to an immigrant’s status, but also severe penal consequences under federal law. This paper seeks to explore how a case of marriage fraud is discovered, investigated [...] Read more.
Marriage fraud is considered a true immigration crime in that not only does it carry penalties related to an immigrant’s status, but also severe penal consequences under federal law. This paper seeks to explore how a case of marriage fraud is discovered, investigated and prosecuted by immigration officials, and, ultimately, by the judicial system. The paper focuses on recent immigration law developments and lays out a blueprint of a marriage fraud case under the 1986 Marriage Fraud Amendments to the Immigration and Naturalization Act. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Immigration Law and Criminal Justice)
751 KiB  
Article
Immigration Federalism as Ideology: Lessons from the States
by Lina Newton
Laws 2015, 4(4), 729-754; https://doi.org/10.3390/laws4040729 - 25 Nov 2015
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 7689
Abstract
Over the last decade states passed hundreds of immigration bills covering a range of policy areas. This article considers the recent state legislative surge against scholarly treatments of immigration federalism, and identifies the symbolic politics in state lawmaking. The analysis combines a historical [...] Read more.
Over the last decade states passed hundreds of immigration bills covering a range of policy areas. This article considers the recent state legislative surge against scholarly treatments of immigration federalism, and identifies the symbolic politics in state lawmaking. The analysis combines a historical treatment of key court decisions that delineated boundaries of state and federal immigration roles with a legislative analysis of over 2200 immigration bills passed between 2006 and 2013, to identify the numerous ways in which national immigration policy shapes state measures. It argues that recent laws must be considered against symbolic federalism which privileges state sovereignty and justifies social policy devolution by advancing frames of intergovernmental conflict, state-level policy pragmatism, and federal ineffectiveness. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Immigration Law and Criminal Justice)
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977 KiB  
Article
Using Increases in Criminal Deportees from the US to Estimate the Effect of Crime on Economic Growth and Development in Latin America and the Caribbean
by Garfield O. Blake
Laws 2015, 4(4), 691-708; https://doi.org/10.3390/laws4040691 - 5 Nov 2015
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 5662
Abstract
Previous empirical studies have uncovered little evidence that crime hinders development, possibly due to simultaneity problems. This paper uses the increase in criminal deportees from the US as an instrumental variable to identify the causal effect of crime on economic growth and development. [...] Read more.
Previous empirical studies have uncovered little evidence that crime hinders development, possibly due to simultaneity problems. This paper uses the increase in criminal deportees from the US as an instrumental variable to identify the causal effect of crime on economic growth and development. An increase in the number of criminal deportees received by a country is shown to substantially increase that country’s homicide rate. Using panel data for a sample of 30 Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) countries, I show that the increase in crime is becoming a major obstacle to growth and development in the region. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Immigration Law and Criminal Justice)
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