Managing Migration Through Crime

In recent years, an increasing number of scholars and commentators have turned their attention to the criminalization of migration in the United States.  One major effect of this criminalization has been the incorporation of criminal law methodologies into the realm of civil immigration enforcement and adjudication.  Recently, Stephen Legomsky has theorized the asymmetric nature of this incorporation.  As he explains, the "theories, methods, perceptions, and priorities" of criminal law enforcement have been incorporated into immigration proceedings, while the procedural protections of criminal adjudication have been explicitly rejected.  His analysis focuses on how the criminalization of migration is reshaping the realm of civil immigration proceedings.  In contrast, this Essay centralizes and attempts to theorize the criminal prosecutions of migration-related offenses.  Part I of this Essay describes this trend.  Part II of this Essay provides several examples of the use of criminal prosecutions in the migration context in order to explore an undertheorized effect of this trend, namely, that the protective features of criminal investigation and adjudication are melting away at the edges in certain criminal cases involving migration-related offenses.