 |
|
It is very difficult to say from the outset what the consequences of a traffic stop are going to be for an immigrant, says Austin Kocher, a researcher with the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a government data analysis effort at Syracuse University. Kocher has studied racial profiling of immigrants, and says the outcomes can very greatly depending on geography.
In cases such as Sylvain’s, local traffic penalties and sentencing practices make a huge difference. It is only once the immigrant passes through the criminal justice system and gets a conviction that the immigration penalties are triggered. The back-and-forth — first in criminal court and then in immigration court — can throw a person’s life into flux for years.
In some counties, local law enforcement officials have been deputized through special agreements to do immigration enforcement themselves. The approach and capacity of ICE’s field directors matters also matters. If they have the time and inclination, they can sift through old criminal records and find people with traffic convictions. These targets are low-hanging fruit for deportation “because, essentially, living in the United States for any longer than a couple of years, it is pretty likely that at some point, you may have gotten pulled over for some reason,” Kocher says. “So it’s a very easy way for them to generate deportations.”
|
|
|
|
