Clinton’s 1996 laws vastly expanded racist criminalization of immigrants and provided the foundation for today’s mass detention and deportation machine
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: media@freedomforimmigrants.org
LOS ANGELES — Marking the 30th anniversary of two laws that dramatically expanded the mass immigrant detention and deportation machine and continue to serve as the main tools behind Trump’s racist, anti-immigrant agenda, Laura Hernández, executive director of Freedom for Immigrants (FFI), today released a new op-ed in Truthout which outlines the tangible steps advocates must take to confront criminalization and build a future in which all people can thrive.
Building upon the U.S. legacy of racialized immigration control, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) and the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) were signed into law by President Clinton in 1996. The laws further entrenched mass incarceration and deportation by drastically broadening the government’s ability to automatically detain and deport people without due process.
IIRIRA, in particular, dramatically expanded who can be deported, made detention mandatory, created fast-track deportations, and stripped immigration judges of much of their discretion. The bills also entangled the criminal legal and immigration systems, bolstering the prison-to-ICE pipeline in which immigrants may face the loss of their freedom twice for the same conviction, a practice known as “double punishment.” This double standard disproportionately punishes Black people and reinforces systemic racism.
“The numbers show just how much these laws have supercharged the mass incarceration and deportation of immigrants over the past 30 years,” writes Hernández. “In 1995, 50,924 people were deported and fewer than 7,500 people were held in immigration detention… Thirty years later, the devastation has only climbed higher, with nearly 330,000 people deported in 2025 and roughly 70,000 people in ICE detention today.”
To turn the page, we must finally confront criminalization, the racist framework that lies at the root of these policies and has been advanced in bipartisan fashion for decades.
“Here lies the danger of not fighting the root of the problem: When we concede fundamental rights like due process for some, we begin to concede those rights for all,” writes Hernández. “When we fight only for those immigrants who have not yet been labeled ‘criminal,’ we’ll find ourselves unprepared when authoritarians inevitably stamp that label on more and more of us.”
“Enough with the exclusions. All people are worthy of human dignity, due process, and the right to live in safety, no matter where we were born… To build toward this vision, we must rally around bold proposals that affirm these values. We must reject the toxic ‘good immigrant/bad immigrant’ narrative once and for all and champion a vision in which freedom, human rights, and basic human dignity are the floor for our demands, not merely concessions or carveouts for some.”
Read the full piece in Truthout.
Learn more about FFI’s work to dismantle the prison-to-ICE pipeline and about the FFI-backed New Way Forward Act.
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Freedom for Immigrants is an abolitionist organization working to end immigration incarceration by organizing with and following the leadership of currently and formerly incarcerated immigrants. We’re building a future in which all people can move freely and thrive. Learn more at www.freedomforimmigrants.org/.