‘Getting Tough’, All Over Again

In spite of what you’ve heard before, there isn’t any one ‘third rail’ in politics. If social security reform is the partisan lighting rod du jour, then immigration reform is a close second. Moreover, if Tom Barry’s piece in the November issue of the Review is any indication, it may well be gaining. Writing about a little-known area of law he calls ‘criminal-immigration’ whereby immigrants – legal and otherwise, convicted of non-violent crimes and possessing legal family members in the US – are sentenced to jail time in so-called ‘public-private prisons’ before their inevitable deportation. Part of a ‘get tough on crime’ mantra coming out of the Bush administration – and one the Obama White House has been reluctant to modify in the midst of an already thorny healthcare battle – these newly rebranded ‘criminal-aliens’ face sentences lasting anywhere from a few days to several years before deportation, thus effectively punishing offenders twice for the same crime. So much for the Fifth Amendment. Read the rest of this entry »