Immigration Enforcement and Subordination: The Consequences of Racial Profiling after September 11
16 Pages Posted: 22 Aug 2006
Abstract
This article documents the arrest and detention of an immigrant caught up in a post-9/11 enforcement sweep by immigration enforcement authorities. This article offers a critical discussion of the legal process to which this immigrant was subject and outlines two strategies to terminate proceedings on the basis of unlawful racial profiling and failure to charge the detained immigrant within a reasonable period of time. Using the case as a microcosm of immigration enforcement policy in the post-9/11 era, it is argued that race-based immigration enforcement justified by the War on Terror is an extension of race-based criminal enforcement justified by the War on Drugs. Consequently, political strategies to protect the rights of subordinated populations in the United States, both immigrant and native, against the authority of the state must be developed and supported by cross-racial alliances.
Keywords: Immigration, Enforcement, Subordination, Racial Profiling, September 11, Detention, Immigration Court, War on Terror, War on Drugs
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