Immigration Article of the Day: The Dehumanizing Work of Immigration Law by Jennifer M. Chacón

The Dehumanizing Work of Immigration Law is an analysis piece authored by immprof Jennifer M. Chacón (Berkeley) for the Brennan Center for Justice. It was part of a series of articles examining the “punit­ive excess that has come to define Amer­ica’s crim­inal legal system.”

In her article, Chacón acknowledges that “our immig­ra­tion laws are excep­tion­ally harsh in ways that frequently defy common sense.” She notes that for many migrants “the notion that there is a ‘right way’ to immig­rate is just not true.” Moreover, “our coun­try has not always honored its own legal processes when immig­rants are doing things ‘the right way.’” And, for those “long-time lawful perman­ent resid­ents who have contact with the crim­inal legal system are often denied the chance to do things ‘the right way.’”

“Again and again,” Chacón writes, “notions of the rule of law are invoked to justify the sunder­ing of famil­ies and communit­ies that would, in other circumstances, seem unthink­able.”

-KitJ