Beyond Deportation: The Role of Prosecutorial Discretion in Immigration Cases (Citizenship and Migration in the Americas)

Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia

ISBN 10: 1479870056 / ISBN 13: 9781479870059

Published by NYU Press, 2017

About this Item

2017. Reprint. Paperback. . . . . . Books ship from the US and Ireland.

Seller Inventory # V9781479870059

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Beyond Deportation: The Role of Prosecutorial Discretion in Immigration Cases (Citizenship and Migration in the Americas)
• Publisher: NYU Press
• Publication Date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1479870056
• ISBN 13: 9781479870059
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

The first book to comprehensively
describe the history, theory, and application of prosecutorial discretion in
immigration law

When Beatles star John Lennon faced deportation from the U.S. in the 1970s, his lawyer Leon Wildes made a groundbreaking argument. He argued that Lennon should be granted “nonpriority” status pursuant to INS’s (now DHS’s) policy of prosecutorial discretion. In U.S. immigration law, the agency exercises prosecutorial discretion favorably when it refrains from enforcing the full scope of immigration law. A prosecutorial discretion grant is important to an agency seeking to focus its priorities on the “truly dangerous” in order to conserve resources and to bring compassion into immigration enforcement. The Lennon case marked the first moment that the immigration agency’s prosecutorial discretion policy became public knowledge. Today, the concept of prosecutorial discretion is more widely known in light of the Obama Administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals or DACA program, a record number of deportations and a stalemate in Congress to move immigration reform.

Beyond Deportation is the first book to comprehensively describe the history, theory, and application of prosecutorial discretion in immigration law. It provides a rich history of the role of prosecutorial discretion in the immigration system and unveils the powerful role it plays in protecting individuals from deportation and saving the government resources. Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia draws on her years of experience as an immigration attorney, policy leader, and law professor to advocate for a bolder standard on prosecutorial discretion, greater mechanisms for accountability when such standards are ignored, improved transparency about the cases involving prosecutorial discretion, and recognition of “deferred action” in the law as a formal benefit.

About the Authors

Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia is the Samuel Weiss Faculty Scholar and Founding Director of the Center for Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at Penn State Law in University Park, Pennsylvania, and author of Beyond Deportation.

Leon Wildes is founder and senior partner of the New York based immigration law firm, Wildes & Weinberg P.C. He served as the National President of the American Immigration Lawyers Association in 1970.