You're only released or skip arrest if you will show up to court, something that's offered to citizens who have no/minor criminal records, no outstanding warrants, and a reasonable expectation of showing up.

The situation is different with illegal immigrants.

Which part is different?

- Do illegal immigrants with families mostly have significant existing criminal records in the destination jurisdiction? The ones that do should of course be treated more harshly, but most do not.

- Do illegal immigrants with families mostly have outstanding warrants in the destination jurisdiction? The outstanding warrant should of course be honored in that case, but most do not.

- Or are we imprisoning people for sometimes over a year, placing their children in (at best) the care of strangers, purely as a mechanism to ensure that they show up to court? Could you imagine the outcry if we did that for speeding?

They are not citizens so don't have the same rights and don't have a legal residence to be sent to so detainment is the only option, other than immediate deportation and skipping any case processing at all.

And yes, even if you are a citizen and you get arrested, you will be separated from your family. If you have children, they will be placed in protective services. They do not go with you to jail. Whether you are arrested for speeding is explained in my prior post.

The U.S. Constitution grants most of the same rights to non-citizens within its borders that it grants to citizens. Things like due process and legal representation are guaranteed to non-citizens within U.S. jurisdiction. There are of course exceptions, like voting, but none of those exceptions are relevant here.

Homeless people also don't have a legal address, but a homeless person won't be imprisoned for a year pretrial and separated from their kids for speeding in the car they live in.

And no, if you get arrested for most misdemeanor crimes, you will usually not be imprisoned and separated from your family for sometimes over a year with no planned method to ever contact each other again. You are just wrong about this. I'm aware of (and rather outraged by) cases where people convicted of serious felonies (in one case, assault with a deadly weapon) are given sentences that still allow them to live with their children most of the time.

It's not speeding or misdemeanor, it's whether you will show up to court or not. Illegal immigrants are not citizens, don't have the same rights, and don't have anywhere to be released to since they cannot be in the country in the first place.

However they do have due-process and have access to lawyers and communications. Detainment is the only answer if you want their cases to be processed, and detainment may sometimes result in families being separated.

Homeless people can be in the country and have the ability to show up in court but they do often spend time in jail and sometimes even commit crime because it ensures food and housing.

You've mentioned rights accorded to citizens, but not to noncitizens, twice now. I can't see the relevance. Which relevant right is guaranteed to citizens, but not to noncitizens in U.S. jurisdiction?

Detainment is not the only answer if you want these cases to be processed. I cite as evidence the fact that there was a backlog of these cases to be processed when the zero-tolerance policy was implemented. If cases were not being processed, there would be no backlog.

Homeless people sometimes going to prison is not relevant to whether or not every illegal immigrant should go to prison.

The right to be in the country. Either they are detained and the case is processed or they are deported immediately. You seem to have no answer to where else to put people who cannot be in the country legally.

The backlog is a resource issue. Precisely the kind of thing that can be helped with better software.

Re: "the right to be in the country", there is no such right.

U.S. citizens do have the (pretty sure only legislative) right to obtain a U.S. passport, which may be presented at a port of entry. Entry may not be denied to someone carrying a genuine and current U.S. passport, though they might be immediately imprisoned upon doing so for unrelated crimes. Entry of a U.S. citizen by other means, however, is just as illegal as a noncitizen overstaying their visa.

Re: "no answer", I had been operating under the assumption that we could take the entire history of the United States prior to April 2018 as evidence that there are other ways of doing things. A variety of solutions were employed prior to that date, with only one solution being employed after. This is sufficient evidence that other approaches are indeed possible.

If the argument is that all of these previous solutions were in fact illegal, then I'm not really qualified to have that argument. Most legal scholars seem to disagree, though.

The backlog is indeed a resource issue. Resource issues are evidence of demand for resources. Demand for these resources is driven by the need to process immigration cases. The backlog is therefore evidence that cases were being processed.

We're going in circles.

They are illegal immigrants. They cannot be in this country so you have to detain them while being processed or deport them immediately. There is no middle ground. I'm not sure what you're referring to as before April 2018 because it's the same process, only the enforcement was worse back then was lacking to the detriment of the nation. Laws are now being followed properly with some adjustments to the queue.

The cases are being processed, and will continue to do so. Better software will only help this situation, along with actually knowing where the person is.

You claim that there was no process change in April 2018? That's certainly a new one to me, and frankly I'm not sure how to have a discussion when we disagree on such basic facts. Politifact (sadly the most neutral source on my first search page) quotes:

>Before Trump came into office, families were detained together, sent back immediately or paroled into the country, said Peter Margulies, an immigration law and national security law professor at Roger Williams University School of Law. Now, prosecution is happening across the board and has become the uniform policy.

Were the options to "[detain them] together, [send them] back immediately, or [parole them] into the country" somehow impossible even when this was being done?

https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2018/jun/06...

Yea, same process. You just repeated what I said. What exactly do you think is different?

1. Are you trying to talk about separation instead? Detaining together is because many people weren't prosecuted, so enforcing the law will lead to possible separation. From your own article: "Prosecutions were rare prior to the Trump administration... The fact that previous administrations did not broadly prosecute all illegal entries..."

2. Parole is not related to illegal immigration. It's for humanitarian emergencies and granted in rare cases where family is dying or other extenuating circumstances. It specifically authorizes the person to enter and therefore they are actually allowed to be in the country. An illegal immigrant may be granted parole the same way they may be granted asylum and will no longer have an illegal status for the duration. https://www.uscis.gov/humanitarian/humanitarian-or-significa...

So parole is one outcome of processing but while they are waiting to be processed it is again only 2 options: detain or deport. And detainment might lead to separation during prosecution. None of this is new, it's just actually being done as the law states.

It's an up to 6 months imprisonment on the first commission and up to 2 years imprisonment on subsequent ones[1]. Is there a definition of misdemeanor, which allows crimes (that are not called "misdemeanor" in the text of law) with up to 2 years imprisonment to be called as such? If so - I never seen one.

1. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1325

> In the United States, misdemeanors are typically crimes with a maximum punishment of 12 months of incarceration, typically in a local jail as contrasted with felons, who are typically incarcerated in a prison. Jurisdictions such as Massachusetts are a notable exception where the maximum punishment of some misdemeanors is up to 2.5 years.[20] People who are convicted of misdemeanors are often punished with probation, community service, short jail term, or part-time incarceration such as a sentence that may be served on the weekends.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misdemeanor#United_States

Public drunkenness can also be punished by 6 months imprisonment in California (not my state, but many HNers live there). Most cases of such are still "punished" by either a reprimand or being kept in a holding cell long enough to sober up.

Since the federal offense in question is not called a misdemeanor in the law and carries up to 2 years penalty I fail to see how it fits the definition you quoted. Also most cases are not punished by reprimand or short arrest either. I understand that left is pushing the idea that it's as serious as parking violation at most but it takes just few seconds to read the actual law and few minutes to research how is it enforced in practice to realize how inappropriate this comparison is.

The first offense carries only up to a six month sentence. I would agree that the second offense should be punished more harshly. In that case, it is less likely to be a legitimate asylum seeker for obvious reasons, and more likely to involve other illegal activity.

I meant most cases of public drunkenness are punished by a reprimand or short arrest, not most cases of unlawful entry. Previously, most unlawful entries were punished by deportation. Obviously unlawful entry is currently being punished by imprisonment for over a year awaiting hearing, followed by deportation and no plan to ever reunite you with your family.

This seems to be technically legal, but the law surely does not require it.

> I meant most cases of public drunkenness are punished by a reprimand or short arrest, not most cases of unlawful entry.

And that's my point. It makes no sense to equate an offense, which is usually punished by reprimand, with an offense which is routinely punished with months of arrest, deportation and a ban on entry.

I guess that's fair. The laws on the books provide similar maximum penalties, but enforcement is obviously wildly different. I'm prepared to retract that comparison, though I would still maintain that the current de-facto penalties are disproportionate to the gravity of a first offense.