Addiction-Informed Immigration Reform
Rebecca Sharpless, University of Miami
Immigration law fails to align with the
contemporary understanding of substance addiction as a medical
condition. The Immigration and Nationality Act regards noncitizens who
suffer from drug or alcohol substance use disorder as immoral and undesirable.
Addiction is a ground of exclusion and deportation and can prevent the “good
moral character” needed for certain immigration applications. Substance use
disorder can lead to criminal behavior that lands noncitizens, including lawful
permanent residents, in removal proceedings with no defense. The time has
come for immigration law to catch up to today’s understanding of addiction. The
damage done by failing to contemporize the law extends beyond the harms of
unwarranted family separation due to the deportation or exclusion of people who
suffer from substance use disorder. Holding noncitizens to an archaic standard
threatens our civic and political identity as a diverse and democratic country.
The bigger the gap between contemporary mores and immigration law and policy,
the harder it is for U.S. citizens to develop a civic and political identity
that is free of ethnic and racial animus. Double standards for citizens and
noncitizens create cognitive dissonance, leaving society vulnerable to
discriminatory or stereotypical views to justify the differential treatment.
This phenomenon not only harms noncitizens but thwarts the formation of a
national civic and political identity free of ethnic and racial bias. This article
proposes and explains the legislative reforms necessary to remedy the current
state of immigration law’s treatment of substance use disorder.
Constitutionally Unaccountable: Privatized
Immigration Detention
Danielle Jefferis, University of Denver
For-profit
immigration detention is one of this nation’s fastest growing industries. More
than two-thirds of the roughly 45,000 people in the custody of federal
immigration authorities find themselves at one point or another in a private
prison contracting with the federal government. Conditions of confinement in
many of these facilities are dismal. Yet, the spaces are largely unregulated.
A
substantial body of law has developed in the United States regarding the
constitutional limits of incarceration. The availability of constitutional tort
remedies imposes some measure of accountability on prison officials and
corrections systems. The Constitution affords no tort remedy, however, for
people who suffer from untreated serious medical conditions, risks to their
safety, and violence while incarcerated in for-profit immigration prisons.
Indeed, the spaces are constitutionally unaccountable. This article is the
first to expose and examine the absence of a constitutional tort remedy for the
people behind the walls of for-profit immigration prisons.
Drawing
on previous work showing the conditions in today’s immigration detention
facilities are inherently carceral, this article uses what I call the “civil
detention fallacy” to demonstrate that when it comes to conditions of
confinement there is no meaningful difference between criminal incarceration
and immigration confinement. Therefore, the same values that form the
foundation of our constitutional jurisprudence regulatin