And Civil Liberties at Ohio State UniversityMoritz College of law and immigration and an Immigration Lawyer. He has appeared in the New York Times, wall street journal, npr, the guardian the guardian and many other mediums welcome him. Thank you. Hey, thanks for. The introduction and to all folks here at books and books for this lovely welcome this evening. And thank all of you for for joining me its its always a pleasure to be back in south florida. I definitely dont get the opportunity to do so often so so im grateful for the chance to get to spend some time here with with you all this so welcome the the ratchet in in defense of the criminal alien. This is a book clearly focused on migrants and and as we go through the year and we we begin to approach the november elections were going to hearing a lot more migrants. Weve already heard a good amount. We know that both President Biden and President Trump are planning visits to the usmexican border and various of texas. Just this week. And so were going to be hearing a lot about migrants from politicians and for politicians on the right, we tend to hear that Migrants Migrants described as people who are coming, the United States hopeful to either take advantage our largesse or maybe just coming here to spread political mayhem or even criminal mayhem and and then on the left, well hear from from folks like President Biden, im sure later week, as we hear quite often from from liberals, from democrats, migrants described as people who are oftentimes just sort of victims victims, maybe of economic forces that are bigger than any of us that are out of the control of any of us. Maybe its victims of smugglers, maybe its victims of criminals. And welcome wretched in contrast to those depictions is, a book about migrants as they actually exist and all of their contradictions then all of their complexities and this is why i put at the center of the book migrants who make mistakes my migrants who engage in criminal activity and so welcome the wretched is a book about migrants just as much as its a book about the law and the law that decides who it is. Gets to make life in the United States, but its not a book a book about the law and the way that lawyers and judges so often mythologize the law as if its this neutral and that has power thats separate from the who dare to move across borders and instead welcome wretched is a book about the law as it actually plays out in the very lives of those people who it touches most directly and most concretely. And thats why fundamentally this book is about people like my dear friend patti, who i write in, in, in, in the book now patti is a brooklyn social worker. Shes spent most of the last two decades working with School Students in the new York City Public School and. And patti has clearly illustrated her commitment to public service. But shes also accomplished a lot academically. Patti has has acquired a couple of of ivy league degrees. I met her when we were undergraduates brown university. And after she finished there she went off to columbia and she got a masters in social work, became a social worker, and then started this career helping kids in in the new york Public School system. But decades before all of that, decades before i ever met patti was just a little girl in the part of the 1980s, when one evening, she walked out those dusty hills east of tijuana and, standing alongside her mom and a group of other people. She waited. The darkness settled. Once it patti pattys mom, her hand and hand and thrown. And the two started walking. They started walking in the direction of the United States. And eventually they crossed international boundary. At some point, they and shortly after doing that, someone the group and either patty and or her those two but someone in the group. Yeah that dreaded word to migrants who are trying to cross into the United States clandestinely whether in the 1980s or these days. Somebody used the word migra Border Patrol agents immigration agents were approaching and. So patty and her mom did what everyone else their group did. They started running. And as soon as they started running, they lost track one another. They didnt know where the other one had gone. And when i asked pattys mom about this dona frances, when i asked her about this this evening, almost 40 years later, well, after daughter had established herself, created a stable life, a successful life in United States, i asked dona frances about that experience, and she could barely even tell me the basic facts of what happened. She could barely even recount for me the basic events of that evening, because it was still traumatic for her, because she had no idea where her little girl was and so after tasking dona frances, i asked patty or, patty, what were you thinking in that moment when you got separated from your mom and you and all these other people just running, trying to escape the Border Patrol agents . And what patty told me was wasnt that she worried about the Border Patrol agents. It wasnt that she was worried about the fact that she her mom, had just violated Immigration Law, in fact, violated and committed a crime entering the United States without the governments permission. Its been a crime. 1929, patty wasnt, thinking about any of that instead what patty told me she was thinking about with her shoot. But she said she was worried about her shoe because the moment that she started running, she ran into some mud and mud pit. And the mud was thick that it held to her shoe as she kept moving forward, that hugo pulled off by the mud. And the first thing she thought was, my mom is going to be mad at him. She was a little worried that her mom was going to be because somehow she had managed to lose the shoe, even though it was tied to her foot. And so patty gets caught by the Border Patrol agents a little while later and she doesnt know it. But her mom has also been caught and neither of the two know it. But theyre down to a nearby Border Patrol station. And eventually patty brought into this holding cell inside Border Patrol station in california and she sees in the corner her mom shaking uncontrolled loudly and crying loudly. And she says to me, thats when i realized i wasnt in trouble because patty wasnt, concerned about the law. Patty wasnt concerned about the Law Enforcement officers. Patty wasnt concerned about the border that they had just walked across. Patty was concerned. The most important relationship, the person who loved her with her mom. And so they got deported that night, they end up back tijuana a few days later locked back the dusty hills. Is that the one place and the way for the darkness to settle . When it does, they again start walking north and eventually they reach the Central Valley of california, which is where pattys life begins. For the second time, United States. This is where their life, they dont have fences dreamed for her child for her daughter begins and eventually the two become u. S. Citizens. And there is a patty. Then goes on excels academic play. And after that devotes her life to helping teenagers in new york city navigate this crazy world that we all live in. And all of that begins in moment in which elinor francis decides that they will get to the United States by whatever means necessary. If that means committing a crime. After they got deported. Pattys mom actually committed another crime because entering the united without the governments permission, thats a misdemeanor, punishable by up to six months in prison. But doing that after having already been deported, thats a federal felony punishable by two years of imprisonment, patty would have had help out all of this, but not so much her mother. In fact, these days we would probably hear politicians, pattys mom, as a smuggler just in the last few few days, in the last week, week or two, we see that attorney general of the state of texas has been a Nonprofit Organization in texas of smuggling migrants into the United States simply because since the 1970s they have been providing them with food, with shelter with clothing. So those folks can be accused smuggling and certainly so can doing offense. And so welcome wretched is a book about people in all of their complexities. People like my dear friend patty and her mom. But its also a book about people like a in lewes, loftus, colgate, the man was born in the Dutch West Indies and came to the United States in the early part of the 20th century. Man, a man who lived in a time when the law was more forgiving than it is now, even the people who lived then were no less mean of being poor, given i want to share with a bit about why it is i write about this stuff differently because. Mostly, he was just a fairly unremarked human being. He worked to raise a family and he was raising a family in manhattan while working at a at a nearby hospital as an elevator operator and and despite his unremarkable ness, one day in october of 1939, he does something so remarkable that i decided that his his life, his story would be fit. The beginning pages of a chapter that i titled illegal isnt illegal. So let me read to you from that chapter i give you a sense of how this lasted for 40 years. Life. One afternoon in october 1939 in the sliver new york city where manhattan stretches alongside the bronx louis loftus papoulias that motion and his sons bed the 13 year old boys face was still by a rag with a neighbor climb through a window into the ruling familys apartment, his body limp and, warm, was scratched on the bed. Earlier that day, lewis had called in sick to his job as an elevator operator at nearby columbia presbyterian center. He waited until. His wife and daughter had gone shopping, then said that since the couples other two children, too, moving only the only oldest child, raymond, was left frail. Raymond became his fathers target. Louis, a rag with chloroform the New York Times reported and, applied it several times to the boys face. We dont know whether the father hesitated or the son struggled, but by the time the Police Arrived was no question what had happened. Louis had killed his son when word of his arrest louis, his coworkers. The hospital collected money to Pay Court Ordered bail, talking to jurors just before them to convict the father. The prosecutor acknowledged a soft spot for the man charged with killing the child. I find it quite difficult to approach the in this case when our minds practically engulfed in the mountain tide of sympathy, prosecutors said he meant sympathy for louis seward. A jury would convicted of manslaughter. But along with their conviction, the jury asked the judge to show utmost clemency despite, having killed his own son before they commanded so much sympathy because his son was ill. Thats what the Health Problem of raymond had. News reports. Youve stated language, neurological problems, but also prevented him from moving around. He was just like dead. All the time, ripley told detectives. Whatever was going on with raymonds and mind his fathers decision treated as a form of loving mercy from his friends to the prosecutor, everyone seemed to that it was better or least understandable to the boy than allow him to continue suffering. Raymonds aside, louis was a devoted parent. The at lewiss criminal trial said, even as he announced that lewiss sentence there no irony. It was possible. Kill one child, be a loving parent to the others. For less than seven years after that dreadful fall, afternoon, lewis would become the newest citizen of the United States. A white born in the dutch west in. These lewis had arrived in his adopted country in 1917, eventually a court would unravel lewiss claim citizenship, but not because he killed, but the pitiable events now long past will not prevent from reporting it from taking his place. Us as a citizen explained it. Billings hand one of the most influential judges in the history of the United States. Instead, the court overturned lewiss naturalization for the most technical reason he hadnt waited long enough to apply. Then federal law required five years of good moral before applying for citizenship, a conviction and lewis had waited four years, 11 months and one week. How do you just waited and how you just held off applying for another three weeks . He would have been admitted without. Question just learn and grow. Had he just been a bit more patient, all three judges would have left his citizenship untouched. Instead, the appellate judges revoked his citizenship, but they suggested that he start over. Thats exactly what the west did. In the meantime, he kept living in the United States, going to work at the hospital and continuing to raise other children like the devoted parents that the judge said he was on april 18, 1949, lewis, a us citizen for the second and final time. What today a century later, almost a century later, far less deviance leads to far more punishment. Theres a common refrain in political conversations about immigration that republicans and democrats cant agree on anything or welcome wretched in defense of the criminal alien shows over and over again that that common refrain is wrong. They can actually agree that one run in with the criminal legal system is one run in too many. In the 1980s, legislators in congress began in congress and in the white house began to radically reshape Immigration Law, leaving the high times the world of in which lewis officer pulling leaving behind the world in which citizenship could follow death for these impressive people. People of that era. The was willing to welcome them into citizenship despite their illegal alien. The generations that have followed lewis loftis fully these days. The boston been able to live their lives as u. S. Citizens and, not so much anymore. Across about ten years, beginning in middle of the 1980s and stretching to through the middle of the 1980s, congress made it easier to fall into the immigration, prison and deportation pipeline. And they made it a lot harder to get out of it. So instead of seeing migrants as the whole complicated people, they in the way that judges saw. Lewis loftus earlier today Immigration Laws tie migrant to their worst moments. And thing is, we are far worse moments. And for some of us, those moments are done in public way where they lead to policing and prosecutions and convictions and i want to read to you about the worst moment that one woman had. A woman, wendy goodwin, and struggles with the fact Immigration Law tried to tie her to that worst moment despite the fact that it was now decades ago for willie goodwin. The worst moment came on may 29, 1993, passing a restaurant in Orange County, california. She and a group of friends stopped. They saw some of their kids. They didnt. Things quickly worsened. Shouting started. A gun came out. Shots were fired. Two girls ended up in the hospital. I unlawfully attempted to kill you. Lou and nathan robuchon, with malice aforethought. When he wrote on the guilty plea that she signed and submitted to the court the say that when he was in gang on the plea form, she agreed. But looking back it when he says thats overblown, it was just a bunch of teenagers that had no positive influence, she told me. As children, we came together to be part of something because i didnt fit in any where. Theres nothing unusual about winnies teenage years. Gangs werent new in Southern California in the late 1980s and the early 1980s, but they were more common, more important than what was happening. The streets of Orange County was what was happening in washington when these teenage years coincide with a period when republicans and democrat were going after each other as being weak on crime. The year that when he arrived in california in 1988 president Ronald Reagan announced crime victims. We declaring the responsibility for crime lies with those who commit. That law allies of reagans Vice President , george h. W. , attacked the democratic nominee for president. Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis for position on releasing prisoners, describing the stabbing and rape of a white couple by convicted black man Willie Horton, who had received temporary from massachusetts prison. Republicans orchestrated. A brutal ad campaign branding the caucuses position as dangerous, launched by lee atwater, a political operative. The tv spot added an unspoken and racial element to the democrats dangerous. Black men were, a threat to white people credited with carrying bush to the presidency. The Willie Horton ad is a lesson in the power of the media. Fan of crime over and over again. The tv news broadcasts menacing images of. A mug shot an image of him looming over cops. Scary closeup often pairing them with photos of the white people who had attacked democrats learned a lesson four years after the Willie Horton ad pushed bush into the white house, the incumbent president s democratic opponent arkansas governor bill clinton, was ready to take the of