And this new approach to prosecution by the Trump administration also means that there will be even more cases clogging our immigration courts.
The country’s immigration court system has been experiencing a backlog of cases for years, and many worry that the new push by the Trump administration to deport my people and punish them the first time they cross the border illegally will only exacerbate the problem.
For more on this, I got a hold of Bijal Shah. She’s an associate professor of Law at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at ASU who specializes in immigration law.
She says the very existence of criminal charges changes the game because it means those people might not be eligible for prosecutorial discretion when judges can prioritize cases based on criminal background or national security concerns.
So, I asked her in light of this backlog that already exists in our immigration courts, can the system handle this policy change?
