New York Times - April 13, 2014

To the Editor:

Re “More Deportations Follow Minor Crimes, Data Shows” (front page, April 7):

It’s a mistake to focus the debate about immigration enforcement on the question of which immigrants are sufficiently “criminal” to deserve deportation. When the Obama administration talks about deporting people with convictions, they are talking about people who have already served their sentences for those convictions.

If you are a citizen who commits an offense, you pay the penalty issued by the criminal legal system, and then you are free to try to rebuild your life. If you are a noncitizen who commits that same offense and pays that same penalty, you can be subjected to the double punishment of permanent exile from your home and family.

This two-tiered system of justice is morally abhorrent regardless of how serious the underlying offense may have been. It’s an unfairness compounded by the well-documented unfairness of the criminal legal system itself, which disproportionately targets poor people and minorities.

Let’s not rely on our corrupt criminal justice system to justify the operations of our corrupt immigration system.

EMILY TUCKER
Brooklyn, April 7, 2014

The writer is staff attorney for immigrant rights and racial justice at the Center for Popular Democracy.

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