Story

I hope she is well and prospering

STORY BY Hassan Ahmad

Hassan Ahmad is an Immigration attorney and reform advocate. Follow him at @hmaESQ.

copy

She sat in the courthouse, waiting to pay off a traffic ticket, watching the nervous hustle around her.

Courthouses are strange places of emotional extremes: people shifting their weight nervously, crying tears of joy or rage or despair, hugging family members, attorneys. Quick, hushed conversations – supposedly privileged, but had out in the open – that can decide a family's fate for years to come. She felt impatient, but relieved that her task was mundane compared to the cacophony around her. In a few minutes she'd be done and on her merry way. 

copy

Suddenly, unfamiliar uniformed police officers called her name.

“Yes?” she answered nervously. She had a criminal record. Not a dangerous one: she had stole a purse. But she did her time – suspended time, meaning she didn't actually have to go to jail because the crime, wrong as it was, was minor. Punishment should fit the crime, of course. Justice was served. And besides, she was done, the case was over. She paid her debt to society. Wasn't there something she had heard about double jeopardy? THE NEXT SEVERAL SECONDS WERE LIFE-ALTERING. 

pullquote

Immigration officers began a process that would result in:

incarceration for over a year, 

losing her green card, and

deportation to a country that she barely remembered. 

copy

Did the punishment fit the crime?

In addition to detention, loss of her green card, and deportation, she also lost out on her dream of attending nursing school or even spending her last Christmas with her family. To add insult to injury: Shortly thereafter, the law would change and the crime of shoplifting that she paid for – twice – no longer was a basis for her mandatory deportation. 

visualizations

WELCOME TO THE TANGLED WEB OF IMMIGRATION CONSEQUENCES THAT COME FROM INVOLVEMENT IN THE CRIMINAL LEGAL SYSTEM.

Noun Refugee Camp 1291274

Criminal law v. Immigration law

COMPARE & CONTRAST

copy

How did we get here?

Our immigration law is plagued with a horrendously bad idea: that people can be illegal and hence disposed of, like so much trash, regardless of their equities. Sure, some people absolutely deserve to be banished from the country. But as crimmigration law evolved, it became more rigid. Judges used to have the power to stop a deportation where such banishment would result in a miscarriage of justice.

Since 1990, they no longer have that power. In 1996, President Clinton signed a law that, among other things, made it much easier for immigrants to be deported – mandatorily – for increasingly minor crimes. The trend has continued since.

copy

​Why should we care?

If we truly are a country of laws, we must ensure that punishments fit the crimes. When detention (read: incarceration) and deportation become easy, we begin meting out criminal punishments without corresponding constitutional safeguards. That is an affront to the rule of law, not an example of it. The right to tell one's story is the heart of due process. When it is lacking, we all suffer. 

Incredulously, some argue that countries like Saudi Arabia deport people with impunity. Is that the standard to which we aspire? I swore an oath as an attorney to uphold the Constitution of the United States. In that document are the words “No person shall ... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” The Fifth Amendment applies to everyone in the United States. There is no citizenship requirement, because we are a country of both Americans and aspiring Americans. 

copy

I fought for her.

I noted that she was given the wrong advice about the immigration consequences when she pled – the transcripts proved it. Had she gotten the right advice, it would have been possible to reduce her suspended sentence by one day, and she would have been eligible to save her green card. I appealed her case all the way to the state supreme court, but they ruled the error wasn't big enough to warrant a reversal. 

I don't know what became of my client. I hope she is well and prospering wherever she is.