Elizabeth Warren In Favor of ‘Decriminalizing’ Illegal Border Crossing

Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren said Tuesday she would be in favor of decriminalizing illegal crossing of the U.S. border, the latest call for open borders by a 2020 presidential candidate.

Warren joins former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President Barack Obama and 2020 presidential candidate Julián Castro, who also believes immigration courts should be the only ones with legal control over immigration enforcement at the border, according to HuffPost.

“I agree with Secretary Castro,” Warren said in a statement to HuffPost. “We should not be criminalizing mamas and babies trying to flee violence at home or trying to build a better future. We must pass comprehensive immigration reform that is in line with our values, creates a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants including our DREAMers, and protects our borders.”

Under the current system, tens of thousands of migrants who cross without authorization, including some asylum-seekers, face federal prosecution in criminal courts and jail time before they get in front of an administrative judge, who decides their immigration cases.

Those facing deportation in an immigration court are not being accused of a crime. But crossing the border without authorization is also a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail. Repeat offenders can be charged anywhere in the country and convicted with little more than evidence of a deportation on their record and punished with sentences ranging up to 20 years, depending on the migrant’s criminal record.

While the laws criminalizing unauthorized immigration have been on the books since 1929, they rarely faced much scrutiny from the public until the Trump administration