Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis

by Jonathan Blitzer

The discretion once exercised by INS agents and immigration judges no longer applied. According to the law, the government had to detain everyone it could possibly deport; once a person was in deportation proceedings no one could intervene to stop them in the event of extenuating circumstances. At the same time, the law expanded the list of crimes that could lead immigrants, including those with green cards and permanent residency, to be deported, even if they’d already served jail time. These crimes were called “aggravated felonies,” and they ranged from drug offenses to acts of so-called moral turpitude. Writing a fake check, evading taxes, and stealing a purse out of a parked car could trigger deportation. The worst part was that the government could punish offenders retroactively, so if someone had committed an aggravated felony five or ten years before the law was passed he would still be deported. In a memo, from November 1996, Rahm Emanuel recommended that the president make use of the new law to burnish his image as being tough on crime. If Clinton took advantage of the opportunities afforded by IIRIRA, Emanuel wrote, he could “claim and achieve record deportations of criminal aliens.”