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Julián Castro probably confused a lot of people with his call to “repeal Section 1325” at last night’s debate. This is something that’s been peculiar for a long time and is likely to divide Democrats.

The whole thing starts in 2005, when George Bush decided to start prosecuting undocumented immigrants in criminal courts. This was done under the authority of Section 1325 of the penal code, which had never been used before. It’s never been 100 percent clear to me why Bush did this, but the ostensible reason was that it would act as a deterrent to illegal border crossings. At first, there was a defensible case to be made for this:

The prosecutions began in 2005 and expanded over the next couple of years. And sure enough, illegal border crossings declined. When Barack Obama became president, he continued the prosecutions:

This is where things get dubious. Nobody seriously believes that Section 1325 prosecutions are responsible for this entire decline. It was mostly due to the Great Recession, which wrecked the US economy and eliminated a lot of the jobs that motivated migrant workers to cross the border. So the question now becomes: just how much of this decline is due to Section 1325 prosecutions? There’s no simple answer to that, but it’s a good guess that, in fact, the decline in 2006 is just noise and the decline in 2007 might be due partly to Section 1325 and partly to the shaky US economy. The rest is probably driven entirely by the economic collapse. In other words, it’s likely that the prosecutions actually had only a modest effect on the overall picture. Further evidence for this is the fact that prosecutions are monumentally backlogged:

The average wait for a case to be heard is now more than two years. It seems unlikely that this acts as a serious deterrent to illegal border crossings, but I suppose reasonable people can disagree about that. However, it also costs a lot of money and makes a joke out of our judicial system.

So Castro’s point is: why continue this? Why not ditch the Bush/Obama prosecutions and just return to the previous system, which was less formal but probably just as effective? Technically, this doesn’t actually require the repeal of Section 1325, merely a return to its historical non-enforcement, but repealing it would obviously be a more permanent change.

Border prosecutions have now been going on so long that everyone accepts them as a fact of life. This is why you hear endless calls for more judges and more resources to reduce the insane backlog of cases. That’s one answer. Another is to simply stop the prosecutions and end the backlog instantly. That’s Castro’s proposal, but not all Democrats are ready to accept it.

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

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