Cruel But Far From Unusual

September 14, 2021

Thousands of immigrants to the United States from Mexico and Latin America are now imprisoned in US detention facilities, for no legal reason other than an immigration violation. In Issues, Mary C. Waters explores how this situation arose as the government adopted a series of laws that effectively integrated the criminal justice system with immigration enforcement, and the resulting social consequences. “We need to think about whether that is something we want our laws to do,” she writes, “and whether there might be a better way of thinking about the human rights of people and the right to social inclusion in society.”