Immigration Insights from the Heartland

Two recent immigration publications in the Iowa Law Review attracted our attention:

Jenny Roberts, "Ignorance Is Effectively Bliss: Collateral Consequences, Silence, and Misinformation in the Guilty-Plea Process" analyzes the issues in a case (Padilla v. Kentucky) before the U.S. Supreme Court that "will decide if it matters whether a criminal defense lawyer correctly counsels a client about the fact that the client faces deportation as a result of a guilty plea."

In a student note, Cassie Peterson published "An Iowa Immigration Raid Leads to Unprecedented Criminal Consequences: Why ICE Should Rethink the Postville Model." Here is an abstract:  On May 12, 2008, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) conducted what was then the largest single-site immigration raid in U.S. history. The raid took place in Postville, Iowa. ICE arrested 389 employees, convicting 297 of them for fraud-related offenses. This marked a significant shift in immigration-enforcement policy toward criminalizing what were previously administrative violations. Critics faulted the Postville model, which included a patterned plea agreement, for being too secretive and improperly expediting the criminal process. These critics feared that ICE violated the detainees’ due-process rights. This Note considers whether there were due-process violations and what the significance of a shift toward criminalizing immigration offenses means for unauthorized workers—and all other persons—living in the United States.

KJ