“You who are so-called illegal aliens must know that no human being is illegal.”

- Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor and Nobel peace prize winner

The criminalization of immigration is a huge issue within the U.S government and criminal justice system. The negative views and beliefs of all immigrants having criminal ties is due to the media portrayal which only shows immigrants when they do something illegal or commit a horrendous act. This has fed the fear American citizens have of immigrants. For instance, after the event of 9/11 there was so much hatred, fear, and discrimination which fueled Islamophobia and affected Muslim immigrants. The U.S criminalizes immigrants out of fear of terroristic threats/events and getting their jobs and resources taken away by immigrants. Since immigrants are seen as threats, the criminal justice system treats them as less than human while expecting them to follow laws better than U.S citizens. Immigrants are in fact not a threat to American jobs and resources. They also do not commit many crimes. Crimes committed by immigrants are less than those committed by Americans in the U.S. Immigrants do not commit crimes due to fear of police, immigration status, and deportation. Immigration was not always illegal and was not taken seriously until the last 70 years. In the early 1900’s immigration between the Mexican-U.S border was common and not frowned upon like it is now and the immigration laws that were first created were not taken seriously. The criminalization of immigration has created a disconnect between all undocumented immigrants and the police which is rooted in fear and discrimination like that of the Black population in the U.S.

• Ewing, W. A., Martinez, D., & Rumbaut, R. G. (2015). The criminalization of immigration in the United States. Washington, DC: American Immigration Council Special Report.
• Gonzalez O’Brien, B. (2018). Handcuffs and Chain Link: Criminalizing the Undocumented in America. University of Virginia Press.
• Hoekstra, E. (2021). “Not a free version of a broken system:” Medical humanitarianism and immigrant health justice in the United States. Social Science & Medicine, 285. 114287.
• Mathis, C., & Androff, D. (2021). The crimmigratory agenda: Historical, economic, and political dimensions of the criminalization of immigration in the United States. Journal of Policy Practice and Research, 2(2), 105-118.
• Menjívar, C., & Bejarano, C. (2004). Latino immigrants’ perceptions of crime and police authorities in the United States: A case study from the Phoenix metropolitan area. Ethnic and racial studies, 27(1), 120-148.
• Samantha Hauptman. (2013). The Criminalization of Immigration: The Post 9/11 Moral Panic. LFB Scholarly Publishing LLC.
• Zavala, E., Curry, T. R., & Morales, M. C. (2020). Explaining the cultural retention–delinquency relationship using differential support and coercion theory: A study of native‐born and immigrant Latino youth. Social Science Quarterly, 101(2), 623–640.

1. How does stereotyping young immigrant boys as being part of gangs and criminals affect incarceration rates?
2. How does lack of health and medical resources impact immigrants and criminal acts?
3. Why do you think immigrants in the U.S. are less likely to commit crimes than U.S. born citizens? Is it due to fear or race?
4. What have you seen on the news/media about immigrants? How many times have you seen them portrayed positively versus negatively? Why do you think only one side is mostly shown (negative side)?
5. How does immigrants assimilating affect crime rates and the types of crimes committed?
6. What are similarities between America's immigrants and Black populations in the U.S in regards to discrimination and interactions with the police?
7. Do you think there is more discrimination towards a certain group of undocumented immigrants (i.e. by race or country of origin)?