A Nonpartisan Clarification on Deportation and Immigration Law
Not all legal violations are criminal.
Regardless of how one feels or sees illegal immigration in the United States—it is a very important topic to most Americans—it is important to at least understand how the law works and what type of law you're working with.
For example, deportation is simply not a criminal proceeding, but a civil one. So no, the mere fact of illegal status in no way justifies parental separation from children or imprisonment. Although this matter does get complicated due to the high volume of detainees in question and the bureaucratic incompetence generally characteristic of U.S. federal government.
This isn't to say that there aren't potential elements in immigration law which can legitimately lead to criminal prosecution. Illegal entry, for example, is considered a misdemeanor criminal offense.
There are two issues worth highlighting, however briefly, regarding the "new" U.S. administration's deportation policies. The first revolves around the nature of the vetting process regarding which specific illegal immigrants are being deported. Irrespective of the fact that clearly all illegal immigrants are devoid of a right to stay in the U.S., if public welfare is truly the cause of the current hullabaloo, it would only follow that the government would be taking active and effective steps to ensure that the most dangerous criminals are the first to be deported. Since illegal residence is a civil matter, this would necessitate a verifiable criminal conviction for high-priority deportees.
How do we know who is getting deported? How can we be sure that the current wave of deportations is comprised of convicted traffickers and violent offenders, rather than unfortunate persons who are in the U.S. in violation of civil law and are not actually criminals at all? There ought to be a way to make such relevant information available to the public. After all, it's only logical that law enforcement would prefer to target petty offenders, who pose little to no threat to officer safety, in lieu of genuinely dangerous and armed individuals who, more often than not, are not working alone.
My second concern is the lack of public interest in why such waves of immigration occurred in the first place. Anybody unfortunate enough to have experience with the U.S. legal system could tell you it certainly has nothing to do with wanting all of our "freedom." What made life in their home nations so unbearable in the first place? Not only that, but so unbearable that they would risk the safety of even their own children? Surely it cannot be a simple matter of criminality. A change in focus might do the world well.
-The Shultz Report by M. Shultz
It’s sad that people don’t know the law! We live off of social media rumor. This is a great article to help people understand truth.