Is immigrant detention mimicking drug policies?

• Position: Brief article

The growing prevalence of detention as a policy within the U.S. immigration system is strikingly similar to policies of criminal sanctions and mass incarceration used to fight the "war on drugs" in the 1980s, claims University at Buffalo (N.Y.) Law School professor Teresa A. Miller.

"The result of these policies in the 1980s and '90s was the wholesale overincarceration of African-American males, resulting in the 'browning' of American prisons," Miller maintains. "The current debate over legislation criminalizing illegal--and overwhelmingly Hispanic--immigrants reflects American anxiety over the 'browning' of the U.S. due to Mexican and Latino immigration over the past 40 years."

As the debate rages and policies of felonization, deportation, and amnesty are considered, Hispanics are...