Crimmigration

This use of membership theory places the law on the edge of a crimmigration crisis. Only the harshest elements of each area of law make their way into the criminalization of immigration law, and the apparatus of the state is used to expel from society those deemed criminally alien.

In the last decade, legal scholars have noted with alarm the increasing alignment between immigration enforcement and the goals and methods of the criminal justice system, terming this alignment "crimmigration." Although discussions of race and nativism have played a large part in this analysis, the same cannot be said for the connection between crimmigration and gender.

The first part considers how the rise of crimmigration law complicates the question of whether deportation constitutes criminal punishment in US law.