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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IJN Opposes Inclusion of Detrimental Immigration Policies in Appropriations Legislation

IJN sent the following letter to Congress in opposition to the inclusion of detrimental immigration policies in FY 2016 appropriations legislation

Dear Member of Congress:

We write on behalf of the Immigrant Justice Network (IJN), a collaboration between the Immigrant Defense Project in New York, the Immigrant Legal Resource Center in San Francisco, and the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild in Boston, to urge Congress to pass Fiscal Year (FY) 2016 legislation free of immigration policy riders that restrict the exercise of prosecutorial discretion and undermine community trust policies. Currently, appropriators are debating provisions that would restrict the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) ability to exercise prosecutorial discretion for noncitizens who fall within the top two priorities of DHS’s civil enforcement priorities. Additionally, appropriators are also considering restricting federal funding to state and local jurisdictions that limit cooperation with federal law enforcement authorities through community trust policies, colloquially known as “sanctuary city” policies. Incorporating these ideological and partisan immigration riders into the appropriations process represent a direct attack on the immigrant community and serves as a painful reminder of Congress’s failure to modernize our immigration system through the enactment of a just and comprehensive immigration reform.

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The Immigrant Justice Network is a leading advocacy voice against the criminalization of immigrants in the United States. Grounded in racial justice values, we build power to defend the dignity of all immigrants.