Over the past several years the phrase "criminal alien" has been blared so promiscuously, and disingenuously, that the fact that simply being undocumented is NOT a crime is often conventiently forgotten.
This obfuscation is harmful enough for the damage it has
caused media and political discourse. But what's worse, the ACLU reminds us in
a new issues brief, is the fact that states and locales are increasingly
translating dubious rhetoric into even more dubious law, by imposing criminal
penalties on people simply for
undocumented presence in the US.
The ACLU writes
Over the past several years, states and localities around the country have increasingly
considered and used state and local laws to impose criminal penalties on undocumented
immigrants. At the same time, the federal government has increasingly chosen to criminally
prosecute individuals who enter or reenter the United States illegally rather than rely on the
extensive civil enforcement scheme under the federal immigration laws.
In public policy debates about criminalizing undocumented immigrants, anti-immigrant
lawmakers and groups often throw around terms like "criminal alien" and other misleading
rhetoric and statistics suggesting that all undocumented immigrants are criminals or a
dangerous threat to the community. Such language can distort debates about the appropriate
use of local criminal laws and of federal prosecutorial resources. Local and state officials
also often misunderstand the nature of the criminal provisions in federal immigration law
and the authority of states and local governments to criminalize undocumented status. In
this issue brief, we discuss questions that arise when a state seeks to enact new criminal
laws or proposes using existing state criminal laws to punish individuals for being
undocumented.
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