Noncitizen Rights

Trends in Immigration Law Enforcement

Federal immigration law developed in the late 1800s, as the U.S. Supreme Court recognized a plenary congressional power to bar or expel noncitizens. Naturalization was largely, and sometimes overtly, based on the perceived race of the foreign-born person. Chinese workers especially suffered under the emerging legal regime.

In the 1940s and 1950s, foreigners of suspect ideology were harassed, detained, and refused admission. Subsequent immigration enforcement increasingly targeted Central Americans fleeing political and economic pressure. Initiated by the Clinton administration in 1994, Operation Gatekeeper augmented southern border enforcement. Human rights advocates fault the strategy for the deaths of hundreds of adults and children each year, as it presses migrants away from California and into the Sonoran desert.

In Texas, the first U.S. immigration prison designed to hold infants and children opened in 1985 through a contract with the Corrections Corporation of America. KBR—a subsidiary of Halliburton, which [Page 1038]provides services to oil and energy companies—holds a government contract to build and run detention and processing sites after a natural disaster or a sudden influx of foreigners.

Recent enforcement has focused on Arabs and Muslims. The association between these groups and terrorism took hold in 1979, after 66 U.S. hostages were taken in Tehran. Scrutiny of Arabs and Muslims occurred within the United States throughout the 1980s and 1990s and intensified between late 2001 and 2003. After the devastating attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in September 2001, authorities interviewed tens of thousands of visitors, mainly working-class, from North Korea and 24 predominantly Muslim countries of Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East. Many interviewees experienced prolonged detentions without charges; more than 13,000 faced removal proceedings.

Post–September 11 detainees within the United States were held mainly in New Jersey and New York, where abuse by guards has been documented. Released detainees have reported being stigmatized or even tortured upon their arrival abroad.

Between late 2002 and early 2003, in the midst of terrorism fears, Congress both abolished the 110-year-old Immigration and Naturalization Service and established the Department of Homeland Security. In late 2003, the new department announced a 5-year goal to significantly increase its detention capacity; by early 2004, thousands had been detained in Endgame, an operation to apprehend more than 400,000 undocumented people over 10 years.

Treatment of Certain Noncitizens after Acts of Terrorism in 1995 and 2001

The 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma killed 168 and wounded hundreds. Although a U.S. citizen would confess to the bombing, fear of foreign terrorism motivated legal responses. Combined, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 blurred the line between support for terrorist activity and carrying it out, removed economic assistance for many residents, and subjected many noncitizens to detention and removal for even minor or decades-old convictions while limiting judicial review.

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