It's Time to Decriminalize Immigration

This Texas Observer article by Executive Directors Judy Greene, of Justice Strategies, and Bob Libal, of Grassroots Leadership calls on Congress to repeal the law that allowed the Trump Administration to separate children from their migrant parents, and for an end to the criminalization of migration.   In it the authors provide the historical links of this destructive policy to the mass incarceration tactics of the failed War on Drugs, now used in a new War on Immigrants, the growing for-profit private prison industry, and increasing attempts under the Trump Administration to federalize local and state criminal justice enforcement mechanisms.  These policy choices have led to a federal court docket 45 percent of which is occupied with the criminal prosecution of migrants for entry into the United States, a misdemeanor, and re-entry, a felony that carries a penalty of from two to five years in federal prison.