This project looks at the political and legal developments in our country's immigration system in recent decades, which stacked upon one another has resulted in an increasingly complex and punitive system for both migrants and refugees. I look specifically at the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) of 1996 and the "zero-tolerance" policy adopted by the Trump Administration in 2018. Both of these government policies contributed to a societal notion of immigrants as inherently criminal by merging our criminal justice and immigration systems into a sort of hybrid legal mechanism. Implications of this shift in policy include weakening existing legal provisions for immigrants and a massive expansion in federal immigrant enforcement. Another resulting phenomenon is the entanglement of local law enforcement into immigration enforcement through the now infamous 287(g) program, contributing to little to no federal oversight of immigration enforcement and widely disparate immigration outcomes in different localities throughout our country. I conclude by analyzing different solutions to our current immigration crisis, including the repeal of mandatory detention laws that criminalize immigrants, the end of family detention centers and a focus on community outreach to build trust between law enforcement and immigrants. Furthermore, a change in our national immigration system requires a societal shift from seeing immigrants and refugees as inherently criminals and rather as simply human beings, just like those of us living in their native country.

Aaron Frazee would like to thank their faculty sponsor Dr. Sarah Cate for their support of this project.