Full Description
How the immigration courts became part of the nation's law enforcement agency—and how to reshape them.
During the Trump administration, the immigration courts were decried as more politicized enforcement weapon than impartial tribunal. Yet few people are aware of a fundamental flaw in the system that has long pre-dated that administration: The immigration courts are not really "courts" but an office of the Department of Justice—the nation's law enforcement agency.
Alison Peck's original and surprising account shows how paranoia sparked by World War II and the War on Terror drove the structure of the immigration courts. Focusing on previously unstudied decisions in the Roosevelt and Bush administrations, the narrative laid out in this book divulges both the human tragedy of our current immigration court system and the human crises that led to its creation. Moving the reader from understanding to action, Alison Peck offers a lens through which to evaluate contemporary bills and proposals to reform our immigration court system. Peck provides an accessible legal analysis of recent events to make the case for independent immigration courts, proposing that the courts be moved into an independent, Article I court system. As long as the immigration courts remain under the authority of the attorney general, the administration of immigration justice will remain a game of political football—with people's very lives on the line.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Preface
Part I. Crisis in the Immigration Courts
1. The Attorney General's Immigration Courts
2. Whittling Away at Asylum Law
3. Policing the Immigration Courts
Part II. From World War II to 9/11: The Ghost of the Fifth Column
4. A New Type of Tough in the Department of Labor
5. Refusal
6. Invasion
7. The Welles Mission
8. Alien Enemies
9. Reckoning
10. Un Día de Fuego
11. President Bush's Department
Part III. The Future of the Immigration Courts
12. Checks and Imbalances
13. Reforming the Immigration Courts
Epilogue: Portrait of an American in the Twenty-First Century
Notes
Bibliography
Index
