JMHS Special Collection | The Law That Begot the Modern US Immigration Enforcement System: IIRIRA 20 Years Later
The Center for Migration Studies (CMS) announces the release of The Law That Begot the Modern US Immigration Enforcement System: IIRIRA 20 Years Later, a special collection of the Journal on Migration and Human Security (JMHS). This collection assesses the multifaceted consequences of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA) by examining the political conditions that gave rise to IIRIRA and the Act’s impact on immigrants, families, communities, and the US immigration system. The special collection features papers that bring a legal, historical, and policy view of IIRIRA’s role in the criminalization of immigrants, the expansion of immigration enforcement and detention, the informalization of removal, and the creation of barriers to family reunification. Authors in this collection include Donald Kerwin, Patrisia Macias-Rojas, Leisy Abrego, Mat Coleman, Daniel E. Martinez, Cecilia Menjivar, Jeremy Slack, Michael Coon, Melina Juarez, Barbara Gomez-Aguinaga, Sonia P. Bettez, Dora Schriro, Saba Ahmed, Adina Appelbaum, Rachel Jordan, Jane Lilly Lopez, Eleanor Acer, and Olga Byrne.
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Publications
Donald Kerwin
From IIRIRA to Trump: Connecting the Dots to the Current US Immigration Policy Crisis
This paper examines the effects of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA). It traces the evolution of US immigration law and policy from IIRIRA’s implementation, to recent measures that seek to diminish legal immigration, restrict access to the US asylum system, reduce due process protections for non-citizens in removal proceedings, criminalize immigration violations, and expand the role of states and localities in immigration enforcement. The paper draws from a collection of papers published in the Journal on Migration and Human Security on IIRIRA’s multi-faceted consequences, as well as extensive legal analysis of IIRIRA and the current administration’s immigration agenda. ...
Patrisia Macías-Rojas
Immigration and the War on Crime: Law and Order Politics and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996
The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA) continues to shape debates on the relationship between immigration and crime. This paper considers the ways in which the War on Crime — specifically mass incarceration policies — reshaped the immigration debate. Through a historical analysis of the policies leading up to IIRIRA, this paper sheds light on the under-studied role that crime politics of the Republican and the Democratic parties alike played in shaping IIRIRA by linking unauthorized migration with criminality and laying the groundwork to track, detain, and deport broad categories of immigrants, not just those with criminal convictions....
Leisy Abrego, Mat Coleman, Daniel E. Martínez, Cecilia Menjívar, Jeremy Slack
Making Immigrants into Criminals: Legal Processes of Criminalization in the Post-IIRIRA Era
Criminalizing immigrants has underpinned US immigration policy over the last several decades. This paper examines the processes of immigrant criminalization in three contexts: 1) the legal history that has produced the current situation, 2) enforcement programs and practices at the border and interior, and 3) the consequences for immigrants and their families living in the United States. In examining such processes, this paper extends the discussion of the criminalization of immigrants beyond the existing literature, on two basic counts. First, it focuses on legislative changes that paved the way for the passage of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) and the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) in 1996, which was a crucial year for the criminalization of immigration. Second, this paper documents how the criminalization of immigrants turns people and indeed whole communities, into law enforcement objects through specific programs and practices, and how immigrants experience this in their family, school, and work lives....
Michael Coon
Local Immigration Enforcement and Arrests of the Hispanic Population
Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), which was added to the INA by the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA), allows the federal government to enter into voluntary partnerships with state and local law enforcement agencies to enforce immigration law. This paper explores the effects of implementation of the 287(g) program in Frederick County, Maryland on the arrests of Hispanics. Using data from individual arrest records from the Frederick County Sheriff’s Office which has a 287(g) agreement with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and from the Frederick Police Department which does not, the paper analyzes the changes in arrests by the two agencies before and after implementation of the 287(g) program in 2008. ...
Melina Juárez, Bárbara Gómez-Aguiñaga and Sonia P. Bettez
Twenty Years After IIRIRA: The Rise of Immigrant Detention and Its Effects on Latinx Communities Across the Nation
This paper argues that the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility’s (IIRIRA) detention mandate, special interest groups, and major federal policies have come together to fuel the expansion of immigrant detention to unprecedented levels. It discusses the implications of the growth in immigrant detention for human rights, legislative representation, and democracy in the United States. This study analyzes two main questions: What is the role of special interests in the criminalization of immigrants? Does the rapid increase in detention pose challenges or risks to democracy? The paper uses a unique dataset to reveal that major restrictive federal immigration policies such as IIRIRA and the increasing federal immigration enforcement budget have had a significant impact on immigrant detention rates. Based on these findings, the paper recommends: 1) increased transparency and accountability in data management from the Department of Homeland Security and on lobbying expenditures from for-profit detention corporations, 2) the repeal of mandatory detention laws, and 3) the repeal of the Congressional detention bed mandate.
...Dora Schriro
Weeping in the Playtime of Others: The Obama Administration’s Failed Reform of ICE Family Detention Practices
The United States has long struggled with the practice of detaining immigrant families and over time, most reform efforts have flagged, if not failed. This paper examines the impact of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA) through an exploration of the family residential center for persons in immigration custody. The paper provides an inside look at how policymakers, at various points in the Obama administration, sought to roll back the administration’s most infirm practices and the fate of those efforts. It begins with a brief history of family detention in the United States, continues with a summary of the reforms undertaken both early and late in the Obama administration, and examines the significant challenges the administration faced and the less progressive positions it adopted during its first and second terms. The paper concludes with a discussion of reasons for the rapid reversal of the Obama administration’s previous reforms and provides recommendations to achieve a civil, civil system of immigration enforcement for families and all others, which means nothing less than the transformation of the immigrant detention system from a criminal to a civil paradigm. The need for such a transformation is all the more urgent in light of executive actions taken in the early days of the Trump administration. ...
Saba Ahmed, Adina Appelbaum, and Rachel Jordan
The Human Cost of IIRIRA – Stories From Individuals Impacted by the Immigration Detention System
The 1996 passage of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) has had a devastating impact on immigrants who are detained, indigent, and forced to face deportation proceedings without representation. Despite the growing specter of the “criminal alien” in the American psyche, there is little public knowledge or scrutiny of the vast immigration detention and deportation machine. Enforcement of IIRIRA has effectively erased human stories and narrowed immigration debates to numbers and statistics. This paper tells the stories of individuals — immigration attorneys, immigration judges, and detained immigrants and their family members — who have personally experienced the impact of IIRIRA. Collectively, these vignettes provide a realistic picture of the immigration detention experience and reveal the human cost of IIRIRA. ...
Jane Lilly López
Redefining American Families: The Disparate Effects of IIRIRA’s Automatic Bars to Reentry and Sponsorship Requirements on Mixed-Citizenship Couples
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY With passage of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA), the goal of discouraging illegal immigration and the legal immigration of the poor triumphed over the longstanding goal of family unity in US immigration policy. This shift resulted in policy changes that prevent some......
Eleanor Acer, Olga Byrne
How the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 Has Undermined US Refugee Protection Obligations and Wasted Government Resources
Seeking asylum is a human right, enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. However, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA) created multiple new barriers to asylum, which have blocked many refugees from accessing asylum. These barriers include a one-year filing deadline on asylum applications, summary deportation procedures, and broad “mandatory detention” provisions. This paper highlights recent research, litigation, and advocacy efforts that highlight the rights violations and systemic inefficiencies generated by IIRIRA. It concludes with a series of recommendations, calling on the US government to eliminate these counterproductive barriers and to take steps to ensure access to asylum....