Drugs, Crime, and Aggravated Felony Deportations: Moral Panic Theory and the Legal Construction of the “Criminal Alien”

Migrant Detention and COVID-19: Pandemic Responses in Four New Jersey Detention Centers

“…This article draws on primary data gathered through in-depth interviews with key informants (n ¼ 15) to present findings on the pandemic response in these facilities from March to October of 2020. It contextualizes primary interview data with an extensive review of media, organizational, and governmental sources regarding COVID-19 in immigration detention, as well as the authors' visits to New Jersey detention centers and their participation in accompaniment programs in the immigration courts where the cases of migrants are adjudicated (Brotherton and Tosh 2018;Tosh 2020). Interviews are also contextualized by participant observation of public hearings and online stakeholder meetings regarding the management of the health crisis by the research team.…”

“…Yet in practice, as a body of administrative (civil) law, immigration law has not been held to the same due process requirements as criminal law. Punitive immigration policies of the past 30 years — the 1996 laws in particular — further eroded the limited due process protections for noncitizens facing deportation (Morawetz 1998; Migration and Refugee Services et al 2015; Kerwin 2018; Tosh 2019).…”

“…This exponential growth is an outcome of increasingly punitive immigration laws enacted throughout this period, including the creation and expansion of “mandatory detention,” a process through which noncitizens facing deportation can be held without the right to a bail hearing. 5 Introduced in 1988 as a consequence of the newly created “aggravated felony” category of deportable offenses, mandatory detention in its initial formulation could be applied only to migrants facing deportation based on convictions of drug trafficking, arms trafficking, or murder (Tidwell Cullen 2018; Tosh 2019). While the aggravated felony category was expanded several times throughout the 1990s, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) and Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) of 1996 grew the reach of mandatory detention most extremely, among many other changes (Kerwin 2018; Macías-Rojas 2018).…”

ARTICLE: Weber and Judicial Legitimacy: A Critical Analysis of the U.S. Supreme Court Immigration Cases Nielsen v. Preap (2019) and Barton v. Barr (2020)

“…The legitimacy of the judiciary is also adversely affected when the Court is perceived as acting on overtly partisan grounds, or swayed by the political exigencies of the moment. Much of President Trump's base supports his harsh immigration policies out of a sense of what Tosh (2019) called "moral panic." Specifically, moral panic leads to law that is created as an extreme form of punishment to a social problem that is sensationalized by politicians and/or the media and is accepted as true by the general public (Tosh, 2019).…”

“…Much of President Trump's base supports his harsh immigration policies out of a sense of what Tosh (2019) called "moral panic." Specifically, moral panic leads to law that is created as an extreme form of punishment to a social problem that is sensationalized by politicians and/or the media and is accepted as true by the general public (Tosh, 2019). Unfortunately for Latin American immigrants, tremendous effort has been made to link them to the illegal drug trade and violent crime and thus this group became an easy target for harsh and punitive laws.…”