Immigration Equity's Last Stand: Sanctuaries & Legitimacy in an Era of Mass Immigration Enforcement,

Social Science Research Network, October 21, 2017, 64 pp.

Author: Jason A. Cade

When Congress in the mid-nineties removed the immigration court system from any role in reviewing deportation orders, it unintentionally created a vacuum in the justice system filled by the sanctuary movement. In this article, Professor Jason A. Cade of the University of Georgia Law School argues that when immigration agents, rather than adjudicators, took over responsibility for whom to target for deportation and how to remove them, the immigration system lost the ability to calibrate decision-making in individual situations, such as when otherwise law-abiding immigrants with family responsibilities are targeted for deportation.  Although sometimes "messy and contested," the attention to equity and justice has now moved "upstream," where local police officers, state prosecutors, and other local actors are intervening to ensure the proper administration of justice. Rather than viewing their actions as legal obstructions, it would be more accurate to describe them as "engines furthering legal norms in the face of the executive branch's mass, indiscriminate enforcement policy and less-than-faithful execution of the full body of our immigration law."  The author discusses in detail the actions of cities, churches, and campuses and suggests that these actions are on "solid legal footing to weather challenges from the federal and state officials who oppose them."