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Date: April 30, 2024 Tue
Time: 12:04 am
Time: 12:04 am
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1 results foundAuthor: Lydgate, Joanna Title: Assembly-Line Justice: A Review of Operation Streamline Summary: The current administration is committed to combating the drug and weapon trafficking and human smuggling at the root of violence along the U.S.-Mexico border. But a Bush-era immigration enforcement program called Operation Streamline threatens to undermine that effort. Operation Streamline requires the federal criminal prosecution and imprisonment of all unlawful border crossers. The program, which mainly targets migrant workers with no criminal history, has caused skyrocketing caseloads in many federal district courts along the border. This Warren Institute study demonstrates that Operation Streamline diverts crucial law enforcement resources away from fighting violent crime along the border, fails to effectively reduce undocumented immigration, and violates the U.S. Constitution. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) began implementing Operation Streamline along the U.S.-Mexico border in 2005. The program has fundamentally transformed DHS’s border enforcement practices. Before Operation Streamline began, DHS Border Patrol agents voluntarily returned first-time border crossers to their home countries or detained them and formally removed them from the United States through the civil immigration system. The U.S. Attorney’s Office reserved criminal prosecution for migrants with criminal records and for those who made repeated attempts to cross the border. Operation Streamline removed that prosecutorial discretion, requiring the criminal prosecution of all undocumented border crossers, regardless of their history. Operation Streamline has generated unprecedented caseloads in eight of the eleven federal district courts along the border, straining the resources of judges, U.S. attorneys, defense attorneys, U.S. Marshals, and court personnel. The program’s voluminous prosecutions have forced many courts to cut procedural corners. Magistrate judges conduct en masse hearings, during which as many as 80 defendants plead guilty at a time, depriving migrants of due process. Indeed, in December 2009, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that Operation Streamline’s en masse plea hearings in Tucson, Arizona violate federal law. By focusing court and law enforcement resources on the prosecution of first-time entrants, Operation Streamline also diverts attention away from fighting drug smuggling, human trafficking, and other crimes that create border violence. To examine Operation Streamline’s effects, the Warren Institute observed Operation Streamline court proceedings and conducted interviews with judges, U.S. attorneys, defense attorneys, Border Patrol representatives, and immigration lawyers in four border cities in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. This report outlines the Warren Institute’s findings. It concludes that Operation Streamline is not an effective means of improving border security or reducing undocumented immigration. Furthermore, Operation Streamline has unacceptable consequences for the agencies tasked with implementing the program, for the migrants it targets, and for the rule of law in this country. The administration should therefore eliminate Operation Streamline and restore U.S. attorneys’ discretion to prosecute serious crimes along the border. If the administration seeks to punish first-time border crossers, it need look no further than the civil system. Details: Berkeley, CA: Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Race, Ethnicity & Diversity, University of California, Berkeley Law School, 2010. 16p. Source: Internet Resource: Policy Brief: Accessed October 1, 2012 at: http://www.law.berkeley.edu/files/Operation_Streamline_Policy_Brief.pdf Year: 2010 Country: United States URL: http://www.law.berkeley.edu/files/Operation_Streamline_Policy_Brief.pdf Shelf Number: 126538 Keywords: Border SecurityHomeland SecurityIllegal AliensIllegal Immigrants (U.S.)Immigrant DetentionImmigration PolicyOperation StreamlinePrison Prisons |