Automatic Injustice: Living Under the Legacy of the 1996 Immigration Laws
Deportations of immigrants and refugees spiked dramatically after 1996 when Congress passed the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA). These laws severely restricted the ability of an immigration judge to consider the individual circumstances of a person before ordering deportation, and greatly expanded the range of criminal convictions that result in mandatory deportation without judicial review. Even lawful permanent residents who have lived in the country for decades, came to the country as children, have advanced degrees or small businesses, or were adopted but didn’t naturalize can be deported automatically and permanently because of these laws. For twenty years, immigrant and refugee families have lived under the legacy of the 1996 laws.
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