Prosecuting Immigration

Presentation by Professor Ingrid V. Eagly, School of Law. Hosted by the Migration Study Group.

Friday, November 06, 2009
12:00 PM - 1:30 PM
279 Haines Hall
UCLA
Los Angeles, CA 90095

This presentation by Prof. Eagly examines how the criminal prosecution of immigration has shaped the relationship between the criminal and immigration systems. Prof. Eagly traces the evolution of immigration crime prosecution and contrasts how the reality of these prosecutions diverges from the conventional understanding of the criminal justice system. Specifically, she argues that there are two significant, and troubling, consequences of the immigration prosecution regime. First, it incentivizes prosecutors to borrow the tools of civil immigration enforcement to support criminal prosecution, thereby distorting criminal procedural protections and expanding criminal law enforcement power beyond the confines of the criminal state. Second, it deputizes criminal prosecutors to act as de facto immigration screeners, thereby threatening the substance and process of immigration law and reordering the aims of the criminal law. Prof. Eagly’s study of the interdependence between the immigration agency and the criminal prosecutor thus reveals a fundamental disruption in one of the central dichotomies in our legal system—the civil/criminal divide.

Cost: Free and Open to the Public

Special Instructions

Contact Prof. Eagly at EAGLY@law.ucla.edu if you'd like to read a draft of her paper ahead of the event.

For more information please contact

Sarah Morando
sarahmorando@gmail.com

Sponsor(s): Latin American Institute, Center for Mexican Studies, the Irene Flecknoe Ross Lecture Series in the Department of Sociology, the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, International Institute