San Diego Criminal Lawyers Blog
Throughout his presidential campaign, Donald Trump has made clear that he wants to “build a wall” along the border of the U.S. and Mexico and that he wants to deport or incarcerate as many as 3 million undocumented immigrants who are criminals. As he works to implement his populist campaign, Trump will now have to contend with state and local officials in California who have resisted the federal government on immigration before and appear poised to do so again.
Top Democratic lawmakers in California are now preparing to enact legislation to protect undocumented immigrants from deportation. Some of the reforms within the legislation include providing free legal help to undocumented immigrants during deportation proceedings, offering more assistance in criminal court, and further limiting local law enforcement’s cooperation with federal immigration agents. The bills are predicted to pass, as both the chambers of California’s Legislature, as well as the governor’s office, are controlled by Democrats. Additionally the state is 40% Latino, the leaders of both chambers of the state legislature are Latino, and, the attorney general-designee, Xavier Becerra, is also Latino.
In the past, California has spent $33 million on legal assistance for immigrants. About 820,000 undocumented immigrants have been convicted of crimes, according to the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan research group.
Federal Immigration Law
Immigration laws are a federal matter under the jurisdiction of the Department of Homeland Security. The agency under that department, is ICE, or Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It is not specified in any federal statute exactly how immigration enforcement is supposed to happen, so the federal government has significant discretion to determine how immigration laws are carried out and who is targeted, given the limited resources they have (called prosecutorial discretion). In 2014 under the Obama administration, the Department of Homeland Security issued new enforcement guidelines focusing agents on immigrants who had serious criminal records or who illegally crossed the border after the start of 2014.
While it is certainly possible for one to be deported just by virtue of overstaying a VISA or entering the country illegally, your chances of being deported are much higher if you have committed a “deportable crime.” This includes:
- Crimes of moral turpitude;
- Aggravated felonies;
- Firearms offenses
- Sexual crimes;
- Domestic Violence crimes.
IT does not matter how long you have lived in the U.S. or whether you have a dependent child who is a U.S. citizen. Likewise, it does not matter if you are a legal immigrant with a green card. Continue reading