Beyond Deportation

When
Beatles star John Lennon faced deportation from the U.S. in the 1970s, his lawyer Leon Wildes made a groundbreaking argument. He argued that Lennon should
be granted “nonpriority” status pursuant to INS’s (now DHS’s) policy of prosecutorial discretion. In U.S.
immigration law, the agency exercises prosecutorial discretion favorably when it refrains from enforcing
the full scope of immigration law. A prosecutorial discretion grant is important to an agency seeking to focus its priorities on the “truly dangerous”
in order to conserve resources and to bring compassion into immigration
enforcement. The Lennon case marked the first moment that the immigration
agency’s prosecutorial discretion policy became public knowledge. Today,
the concept of prosecutorial discretion is more widely known in light of the
Obama Administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals or DACA program,
a record number of deportations and a stalemate in Congress to move immigration
reform.

Beyond
Deportation is the first book to comprehensively describe the history, theory, and application
of prosecutorial discretion in immigration law. It provides a rich
history of the role of prosecutorial discretion in the immigration system and unveils the powerful
role it plays in protecting
individuals from deportation and saving the government resources. Shoba
Sivaprasad Wadhia draws on her years of experience as an immigration attorney,
policy leader, and law
professor to advocate for a bolder standard on prosecutorial discretion,
greater mechanisms for accountability when such standards are ignored, improved
transparency about the cases involving prosecutorial discretion, and recognition of “deferred action” in the law as a formal benefit.