Title
Authorizing the Joint Committees on Children and Youth and Education to hold hearings to discuss the impact of twenty years of the "1996 Immigration laws" on Philadelphia's Immigrant Community and their impact on the school-to-Prison-to-Deportation Pipeline on Philadelphia's Immigrant Youth.
Body
WHEREAS, 2016 marks twenty years since the passing of the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA), otherwise known as the "1996 Immigration Laws"; and
WHEREAS, The 1996 Immigration Laws expanded the grounds for deportation, broadening the definition of "aggravated felony" by removing judicial discretion and due process in deportation cases and categorizing deportation for an "aggravated felony" as permanent with no hope of return; and
WHEREAS, These laws doubly punish immigrants who have already served jail time, as their implementation was applied retroactively to include deportation for crimes committed before the existence of the law; and
WHEREAS, Since 1996, and particularly since the founding of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 2003, the U.S. has made significant investments in the surveillance, policing, prosecution, imprisonment, and deportation of both U.S. residents and migrants, resulting in the forced removal of millions; and
WHEREAS, Collectively, the Obama and Bush administrations deported more than five million people, nearly double the number deported by all previous presidents combined; and
WHEREAS,Congress currently mandates the maintenance of 34,000 prison beds for immigrants; and
WHEREAS, This shift to harsher punishment and enforcement against immigrants in federal law was coupled with an equally severe shift in criminal and juvenile justice law through legislation such as the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, the Violent and Repeat Juvenile Offender Act of 1997, the Juvenile Crime Control Act of...
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