JANUARY 20211
In this current political moment, we need bold solutions that address systemic racism in our institutions
and uplift our values of fairness and caring for our neighbors. Notably, the Trump administration’s abuses
of people who are immigrants are rooted in harsh immigration laws which disproportionately led to the
targeting, jailing, and destruction of families of color. Anti-immigrant laws passed in 1996 drove the mass
detention and deportation of Black and brown immigrants. Additionally, a harmful law passed by a
white supremacist Senator in 1929 has enabled significant abuses in recent years, from “assembly-line”
hearings of shackled people, to the tearing of children from parents at the border.
Meanwhile, Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s long record of medical neglect led to significant
COVID outbreaks last year which the agency then spread to other countries.
This backgrounder explains how these laws work, the devastation they have caused, and offers a
blueprint for positive change that challenges white supremacy embedded in current laws—illustrated by
stories of three people who have lived it.
PROBLEM: RACIST POLICING PRACTICES
Practices like stop-and-frisk, broken windows policing, and racially-driven vehicular stops can lead to
deportation. Racial profiling results in unequal rates of arrests—and funnels people into the deportation system.
• Nearly all drug offenses, including marijuana offenses,
can result in devastating immigration consequences,
including deportation.
• Although only 7% of non-citizens are Black they
represent 20% of people in deportation proceedings on
“criminal grounds.”
• Latinx are imprisoned at 1.4 times the rate of whites.
• These injustices are exacerbated when local police
are entangled with ICE, which further undercuts
confidence in law enforcement.
SOLUTION:
Convictions, often steeped in racial profiling, should not lead to deportation. And local law
enforcement should not act as deportation agents or otherwise carry out deportations with ICE.
WHY WE NEED A
NEW WAY FORWARD
A BLACK PERSON
10X
AS LIKELY AS
A WHITE PERSON TO BE
ARRESTED FOR:
IS ALMOST
LOITERING, DISORDERLY
CONDUCT, TRESPASSING,
MARIJUANA POSSESSION
2 JANUARY 2021
SOLUTION:
It’s time to end mandatory immigration detention—and facilities that profit off of putting
people in cages.
PROBLEM: PROFIT AND PERVERSE INCENTIVES DRIVE DETENTION
Immigration detention is mass incarceration: immigrants wear the same jumpsuits and shackles, are
subjected to the same coercive techniques including solitary confinement, and suffer physical and sexual
violence. Despite broad bipartisan consensus that it’s time to reduce mass incarceration, immigration
detention has become the fastest growing incarceration system in the U.S.
• ICE has the power to detain many immigrants—often
without even a bond hearing—for the duration of their
deportation proceedings.
• In the 2020 fiscal year, 21 people died in ICE custody—the
highest death toll in 15 years.
• In one year, more than 48,800 complaints were filed
against detention facilities for a lack of access to legal
counsel, sexual violence and abuse, and substandard
conditions and medical care.
• 81% of people in ICE custody are held in immigration
jails owned or managed by private prison corporations,
criticized for their utter lack of oversight. Perverse financial
incentives are endemic to the detention system. Local
governments are also incentivized to cooperate with ICE
and build or expand detention facilities as a means to
bring in more funding for their dwindling budgets.
PROBLEM: JUDGES FORCED TO DEPORT
The 1996 laws tie judges’ hands so much that many immigration hearings amount to little more
than rubber-stamping an ICE agent’s charges.
The 1996 laws frequently prohibit immigration judges from
considering:
• Whether an immigrant is a veteran, sole caregiver to
minor U.S. citizen children, employer of U.S. citizens,
long-term resident, teacher, victim of domestic abuse,
patient with severe health problems, homeowner, parent,
grandparent, caregiver for elderly parents, community
leader, or example of successful transformation.
Many convictions within seven years of entering the
U.S. make a green card holder subject to mandatory
deportation.
• In these cases, a judge is forbidden from considering any
positive factors in the individual’s life, including family
ties, recent conduct, or transformation.
SOLUTION:
We need to restore due process and protect people from arbitrary abuses. Immigration judges
must have the power to consider the individual circumstances of each person’s life and ensure they can stay
in the U.S.
MANY CONVICTIONS WITHIN
SEVEN
YEARS
OF ENTERING THE U.S.
MAKE A GREEN CARD
HOLDER SUBJECT TO
MANDATORY
DEPORTATION
ICE has the power to detain many
immigrants—often without even a
bond hearing—for the duration of their
deportation proceedings.
JANUARY 20213
PROBLEM: ARBITRARY DEFINITIONS, EXCESSIVE PUNISHMENT
The 1996 laws allow and often force judges to deport people based on terms so unfairly expansive
they have given rise to constitutional challenge. So-called “aggravated felonies” and “crimes of moral
turpitude” can deprive a person of any defense to deportation. The only factor a judge may consider is a
conviction, even if it is decades old.
• “Aggravated felony” is a vague term that includes 21
categories, encompassing hundreds of offenses. Many
are not even felonies.
• A conviction can count as an “aggravated felony” even if
the sentence was suspended, no jail time was required, or
the conviction was expunged.
• Unlike other areas of law, people can be targeted
decades after a conviction for harsh additional
punishment of detention and deportation.
• An expunged or sealed conviction is often still a “conviction”
for immigration purposes, undercutting the commitment to
reentry that many cities and states are making.
SOLUTION:
It’s time to repeal these abusive categories. And community members should be able to move
forward with their lives without fear that an old conviction could lead to deportation years later. Additionally, people
previously ordered deported under these unjust laws should be able to apply for the opportunity to come home.
PROBLEM: CRUEL PROSECUTIONS, HARSH PRISON SENTENCES
A troubling section of federal law (8 US Code § 1325 and 1326) written by an “unrepentant” white supremacist
Senator in 1929 has worked in tandem with the 1996 laws to further drive mass incarceration. In recent
decades, this provision has fueled a sharp spike in federal prosecutions, targeting people who cross the border
seeking safety, freedom, and opportunity—and people who are coming home after unjust deportation. Federal
prosecutions and prison sentences are an extra punishment in addition to unjust detention and deportation
through the immigration system.
• Prosecutions for immigration violations accounted for
more than six in ten of all federal prosecutions in FY 2018.
These prosecutions contributed to approximately 10
percent of the federal prison population on any given
day. With over 10,000 people in federal custody for such
offenses, this has fueled mass incarceration despite
growing consensus that it must end.
• These troubling provisions have also enabled “assembly-
line” hearings of dozens of shackled people at a time
under the past three administrations—and the infamous
tearing of children from parents at the border under
Trump. People suffer—but the prison industry benefits.
SOLUTION:
We need to end federal prison sentences for people who cross the border seeking safety and
freedom or trying to come home.
Removing this punitive provision is an important step, but we’ll still have much more work to do. We should
honor the vision and voices of border communities, and lift up policies that recognize the humanity of people
who are migrating.
In 20 years, the number of federal
criminal prosecutions for immigration
issues increased by
579 percent.
89,000
federal
criminal
prosecutions
(First 11 months)
FY 2018 FY 1998
The 1996 laws often force judges to
deport people based on terms so unfairly
expansive they have given rise to
constitutional challenge.
4 JANUARY 2021
THE DEVASTATING CONSEQUENCES OF DETENTION
AND DEPORTATION INCLUDE:
Across the country, community members who have been hurt by detention and
deportation are organizing to repair the harm caused by these unjust laws.
Following are three of their stories.
FAMILIES TORN
APART
tens of thousands of
U.S. citizen children
have a parent who is
detained or deported
every year.
HIGHER RISK OF
HOMELESSNESS
and food
insufficiency for family
members left behind.
INCREASED RISK OF
DEPRESSION
anxiety, and PTSD in
children.
LOSS OF INCOME
family income drops
by 70% on average
after an ICE arrest.
HOWARD BAILEY
came to the U.S. in 1989 at the age of 17 as a Lawful
Permanent Resident with his U.S. Citizen mother. After graduating from high
school he joined the navy during which time he was awarded the National
Defense Service Medal.
In 1995, shortly after his return from the Persian Gulf, Howard was convicted of
a first-time drug offense. With Virginia’s strict mandatory minimum sentencing
laws for drug crimes, Howard didn’t have many options. His lawyer advised him
to plead guilty and take 15 months in a state work camp rather than risk going
to trial and a much higher sentence.
After completing his sentence, Howard returned to his family and worked hard to rebuild his life. He
devoted himself to his loving wife and two children, started two small businesses, and employed seven
people. In 2005 Howard applied to become a US citizen, and disclosed his old conviction. In 2010,
after five years of delays, his application was denied. At 6AM one morning ICE agents handcuffed and
detained him at his home in front of his wife and children.
After two years fighting his case in immigration detention, far away from him family, Howard was
deported to a country he hadn’t seen in 24 years. Howard lives in constant fear of violence as deportees
are stigmatized in Jamaica. He is unable to support his family, his business has shut down, his home is
under foreclosure, and his teenage children are struggling emotionally and academically without him.
Howard remains in Jamaica, and the current immigration laws provide him with almost no option for an
opportunity to return home and be reunited with family.
JANUARY 20215
CECILIA EQUIHUA is a public defender in Los Angeles. Her father, Francisco
Equihua Lemus, was first deported in 2001 after serving four years in a
California prison for a drug offense. Cece was just seven years old when her
dad went to prison. She and her little sister Lili were living in Las Vegas with
their mother when Francisco returned to the U.S., determined to be close to his
daughters and support them.
Finding work in Las Vegas without documents proved difficult, so Francisco
settled in Los Angeles where he found stable employment as a construction
worker. He chose to live in a shed in someone’s backyard in order to be able to contribute to his
daughters’ support. Every weekend, for nine years, he drove to Las Vegas to take Cece and Lili to church.
In November 2010, while driving home from visiting his daughters, Francisco was pulled over by the
highway patrol in Rancho Cucamonga, California, for a broken tail light. A fingerprint check at the local
police station led to a call to immigration authorities.
Back in Mexico again, Francisco was desperate to be reunited with his daughters. But his attempt to return
once more went haywire. Cece received a call from relatives that he had gone missing. Fearing the worst,
she postphoned a college philosophy exam to try to hunt him down. Two weeks later, he called her from
the Central Arizona Detention Center to say he had been apprehended and was facing felony re-entry
charges. Sentenced to serve two years, he was then transferred to a private prison operated by CoreCivic
in Milan, New Mexico. Living now in Michoacán after his third deportation, Francisco stays in touch with his
daughters by phone, but grieves deeply for having lost them again.
RAVI RAGBIR
has lived in the U.S. for over two decades and has been a
green card holder since 1994. Ravi is a nationally-recognized immigrant rights
activist and leader of the New Sanctuary Coalition, a group of over 20 faith-
based organizations in New York City that advocates for immigrant rights. Ravi
has dedicated his life to the dignity and well-being of immigrants.
Ravi was detained and ordered deported in 2006 because of a single fraud
conviction in 2001 for which he already served his sentence. Because his
conviction was considered an “aggravated felony”, he was not able to
present evidence to the judge about his character and community ties. For almost two years, he was
mandatorily detained without bail, including time spent halfway across the country in Alabama, far from
his family.
Since his release from immigration detention, Ravi has challenged the immigration judge’s order. He
has also become one of the New York’s most prominent immigrant rights activists. He trains hundreds of
volunteers to accompany immigrants to ICE check-ins, meets with elected officials to discuss detention
and deportation policy, and organizes other immigrants. Ravi was recognized with the Immigrant
Excellence Award by the New York State Association of Black and Puerto Rican Legislators, given to those
who show “deep commitment to the enhancement of their community.” In recognition of his value to the
community, Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez introduced a private bill to allow Ravi to remain here.
Despite his commitment to his family and community, and the support by elected officials, Ravi remains
under a deportation order. In January 2018, ICE suddenly arrested Ravi and attempted to deport him. He
was able to fight this action and continues to fight his deportation, but every day, his family and friends
hope that it will not be the last time they see each other.
