Immigrant Detention Resembles 1980s Drug Policies

Release Date: April 13, 2006 This content is archived.

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BUFFALO, N.Y. -- The growing prevalence of detention as a policy within the U.S. immigration system is strikingly similar to policies of criminal sanctions and mass incarceration used to fight the "war on drugs" in the 1980s, according to University at Buffalo Law School Professor Teresa A. Miller, who studies the U.S. prison system and teaches immigration law.

"The result of these policies in the 1980s and '90s was the wholesale over-incarceration of African-American males, resulting in the 'browning' of American prisons," Miller says.

"The current debate over legislation criminalizing illegal, and overwhelmingly Hispanic, immigrants reflects American anxiety over the 'browning' of the U.S. due to Mexican and Latino immigration over the past 40 years," she adds.

As the debate wages and policies of felonization, deportation and amnesty are considered, Hispanics are at critical crossroads for their future in America, says Miller, who has lead law students on tours of immigration detention centers.

"The question from my perspective is whether immigration control becomes a tool used to channel a large percentage of low-income Hispanics into the prison system or out of the country, as low-income African Americans were channeled into the prison system and internally exiled in the 1980s," says Miller.

Under deportation law, non-U.S. citizens get even fewer constitutional rights than criminal defendants, making immigration law reform an attractive option for exporting what is seen as a growing domestic problem, Miller points out.

To address the social, economic and political impact of the convergence of immigration and crime control, also known as "crimmigration," Miller is organizing what may be the country's first conference on the topic. To be held April 28-29 at UB's Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy, "Merging Immigration and Crime Control" will feature commentary from several prominent experts on immigration.

For conference information, go to http://www.law.buffalo.edu/baldycenter/immigration06.htm.

Unlike the movement to criminalize illegal drug use in the 1990s, which was supported by a "tough on crime" message that was attractive to many American voters, the current immigration reform proposals are far more politically divisive, even within the ranks of liberals and conservatives, Miller says.

"Bill Frist's proposal to fine employers who hire illegal workers works against the interests of agribusinesses who employ large numbers of foreign workers, many of whom are illegal," Miller says. "Yet in the context of a country steeped in 30 years of 'get tough' rhetoric, amnesty doesn't sit well even with many liberal voters.

"The compromise that was brokered late last week took the felonization of illegal aliens off the table, but moved the position of liberal Democrats who initially favored amnesty far to the right, supporting instead fines and requirements that seemed Draconian only a few years ago."

According to Miller, the failed Senate compromise on an immigration reform bill, and the mass protests that occurred a few days later, have injected political uncertainty into the debate. This may produce continued movement away from reforms that emphasize detention and incarceration and focus the debate instead on addressing economic factors that encourage illegal immigration.

"I know that increased punitiveness in criminal severity is not going to stop people coming here illegally. Locking up drug dealers did not stop drug trafficking; locking up illegal immigrants is not going to stop their flow into the U.S.," Miller says.

"But what it will do is grow another prison system, making the state liable for the care of many more prisoners, and that's going in the wrong direction."

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