I had an exchange the other night with a person concerned that ICE was arresting illegal immigrants, especially children. The person found disturbing the images and videos of immigrants being detained and arrested, and of the detention centers. What crime had they committed?
The answer is straightforward: they committed the crime of illegally entering the United States. Other countries also have immigration laws. And the children? Children are arrested all the time in the United States for violating the criminal law (roughly half a million juvenile arrests per year, based on the latest available national data). We have a thing in America called juvenile justice. They have this thing in many other countries, too (over 190 countries have some form of juvenile justice framework).
What about family separation? Families are separated all the time in America when a family member violates the criminal law. Arrest, detention, prison—all these separate families. About 1.2 million people are incarcerated in US prisons and jails on a given day. Roughly half of them are parents of minor children, affecting an estimated 1.5–2 million children. Over the course of childhood, approximately one in 19 US children experiences parental incarceration. Millions more experience temporary separation due to arrests, pretrial detention, probation conditions, or community supervision. Children don’t go to jail or prison with their criminal parent.
What should we do with illegal immigrant children? Keep them in America when we send their parents back home? Wouldn’t that be family separation? Of course. So we keep the families together and send them all back to where they came from.
The hysteria over the regular enforcement of immigration law dispossesses people of seeing the most obvious things.
Here’s another one of those things: the claim that breaking immigration law is not a criminal offense because it is a misdemeanor. Sometimes. Sometimes it’s a felony. But what if it is only a misdemeanor? Does that make it not criminal?
To clear up any confusion, the difference between a felony and a misdemeanor is a matter of severity, not whether they are both criminal offenses. A felony is a more serious crime with harsher penalties. A misdemeanor is a less serious criminal offense. That’s really it. It is an easy exam question. My criminal justice students very rarely get the question wrong.
Felonies include crimes such as murder, robbery, and major drug trafficking. Felonies usually carry sentences of more than one year in prison and may result in substantial fines. In addition to longer sentences, felony convictions often have more significant long-term consequences, such as restrictions on certain civil rights and greater difficulties with employment, housing, and professional licensing.
Misdemeanors are typically punishable by fines, probation, community service, or up to one year in a local jail. Examples of misdemeanors include petty theft, minor assault, drug possession, and vandalism, although these can also be felonies, depending on how the statute is written.
It is a matter of degree, not difference.
Before the immigration hysteria, I think most people understood that misdemeanors are criminal offenses. The power of ideology is impressive. It makes people forget what they always knew. However, I think many people who make this argument have conveniently forgotten the difference in the pursuit of politics. They are, in effect, lying.
Another thing that one hears is that violating immigration law is only a civil offense (civil offenses are not trivial). It depends. But it is also a criminal offense.
For those interested in federal immigration-related criminal statutes, these are primarily found in Title 8 of the United States Code (Aliens and Nationality). There are some scattered throughout Title 18 (Crimes and Criminal Procedure) and other federal statutes. But searching Title 8 statutes will quickly dispel any notion one has that illegally entering the United States is not a criminal offense. There are too many statutes to list here, but reasonable people will look them up and educate themselves about the criminal law in this area.
It seems a strange argument if one ignores the ideology and politics behind it. Why would anybody want law enforcement to enforce the law except when it pertains to those who illegally enter the country? Why should non-citizens enjoy immunities and privileges that citizens do not enjoy? You really have to hate your country to think this way.
Of course, if you are an anarchist and think that there should be no law at all, then none of this matters. But then your opinion doesn’t matter because you’re a fucking idiot.
freedom and reason 