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Immigrants Aren’t Lucky Enough To Get Second Chances

Harsh federal immigration laws force people into a prison-to-deportation pipeline, even after they’ve served their time.

CREDIT: AP PHOTO/MARK HUMPHREY
CREDIT: AP PHOTO/MARK HUMPHREY

Last week, President Obama granted 214 commutations as part of an effort to grant pardons to people who committed non-violent, low-level criminal offenses. Obama now has the distinction of shortening the sentences of more federal inmates than any other president since Calvin Coolidge, solidifying his promise to address mass incarceration during his time in office.

“This is a country that believes in second chances,” Obama wrote on Facebook before the announcement. “So we’ve got to make sure that our criminal justice system works for everyone.”

But those second chances don’t apply to immigrants.

The way that Obama’s policies affect immigrant families has been very controversial during his time in office. With more than one million deportations, he has earned the nickname of “deporter-in-chief.”

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Some of those people had already paid their debt to society. Overzealous enforcement tactics stemming from the War on Drugs and a strict adherence to a two-decade old federal immigration law has made it mandatory for immigrants to be handed over to federal immigration authorities after they serve out their prison sentences.

“This is a country that believes in second chances.”

Passed in 1996, that law allowed the U.S. government to expand the types of violations that qualify for mandatory detention of immigrants who are convicted of an “aggravated felony,” such as low-level misdemeanors like simple possession of a controlled substance.

Even if prison sentences for immigrants are commuted or shortened through other means, the Department of Justice has clear guidelines that those people need to be turned over to the Department of Homeland Security, the main agency overseeing federal immigration enforcement.

Last year, for example, the Federal Bureau of Prisons released 6,112 people with drug convictions from custody and handed 1,764 of them to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency.

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That’s why 36-year-old A.G., who left Armenia at the age of 12 and is now a legal immigrant living in the United States, may be punished with deportation even though he’s already finished his time in prison.

A.G. — whose wife requested that his real name be withheld — served a year-long prison sentence for getting into a physical altercation with his landlord’s ex-husband. But before he was released, A.G. was transferred over to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency to begin his deportation proceedings. He has been held at the Theo Lacy Detention Facility, an immigration detention center in California, since February.

Immigration detainees sit in their cells at the Theo Lacy Facility CREDIT: AP PHOTO
Immigration detainees sit in their cells at the Theo Lacy Facility CREDIT: AP PHOTO

His wife A.M., who requested to be identified only by her initials for fear of repercussion, said that prior to his arrest, A.G. had turned his life around from a rough childhood and became a manager at a retail store that employed more than 50 employees. They were also engaged to be married. At the time of his conviction, according to his wife, A.G. had taken anger management classes with two therapists and had received a swell of letters written by community members who spoke about him as a good manager and caretaker.

The couple ended up getting married through the window at the immigration detention center, A.M. told ThinkProgress.

Now, as A.M. continues to wait to find out about her husband’s fate, the mortgage loans have stacked up.

“We bought a house,” A.M. said. “I don’t know how long I can make payments to the house when I don’t have that extra support. That’s been a hardship. Being apart has been torture.”

“Being apart has been torture.”

In October, A.G. will face an immigration judge who will determine whether he will get deported. If he has to return to Armenia, A.G. will become another immigrant penalized by the harsh, one-size-fits-all policy affecting people who may otherwise deserve individual consideration.

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This kind of excessive punishment for immigrants who have served time has led to 260,000 deportations of people whose most serious conviction was for a drug offense between 2007 and 2012, according to the human rights organization Human Rights Watch — some of whom likely pose no threat to public safety because they have turned their lives around.

Still, in the absence of policy changes to federal immigration laws, some states and localities are already giving immigrants the second chance they may deserve by preventing them from winding up in detention in the first place.

Many places, especially major metropolitan areas, have resisted mandatory collaboration with federal immigrant authorities to detain immigrants for potential deportation proceedings. Instead, they can adhere to “voluntary” arrangements to hold immigrants for federal custody. And in April, California State Sen. Ricardo Lara (D) introduced a bill that aims to curb the use of private, for-profit detention centers like Theo Lacy.