I was in federal court in Boston on Tuesday waiting to be heard on a civil case.  There was also a criminal sentancing scheduled before the judge in my case and, as is usually the situation, the criminal sentancing went first, so I sat and watched it along with one of my partners and our client.

The proceeding underlined with great clarity the message in the "Relatio" document from the Synodon the Family that socities "riven by violence" due to terrorism, war or organized crime experience family breakdowns, and migration (especially migration to the United States) needs to be understod in those terms.

The criminal defendant, who had pled guilty, was from El Salvador.  He looked to be about 40, and his offense was coming into the United States illegally after he had been deported once before.  While here he had a job, supported his girlfriend and child in El Salvador, and had been accused of no crime.  His only crime was entering the country illegally a second time.

He spoke little English but his lawyer, who was quite articulate, explained that in his youth the defendant had become affiliated with gangs in El Salvador, and that gang affiliation had led to crimes in the United States as well.  So in his twenties the man had been deported.

According to the lawyer, his client had turned his life around, gotten off alcohol and drugs, and gone so far as to have his gang tatoos surgically removed.  He'd also met a woman in El Salvador and then had a child together.

Unfortunately, however, there simply wasn't any way for this now thirty-something year old man to earn a living in El Salvador, given the horrible crime and gangs.  Without his gang tatoos, he was a target for violence on the streets. So he had come to the United States again, gotten a job, and sent the money home. 


It was never clear how he had come to the attention of the government, but somehow  he had.  For the offense of being here and working to support his family, the defendant was ordered to spend 34 months in federal prison, and then be deported again. 

You have to wonder about the economics of keeping someone for almost three years at federal expense, unable to earn any support for his family, and then deporting him.  But, as the jdge explained, we have a right to control our borders and there have to be consequences -- general deterence and specific deterrence, as he explained-- or else the law will have no impact.

All that is true, of course, but seems completely unsatisfying from a family perspective.  One is reminded of the English system in Charles Dickens' time where debtors went to prison when they couldn't pay their debts, thereby making it even harder for them to pay the debts off.  Often their families were in prison with them.  That system seems so obviously wrong to us now.  I wonder if in 100 years people will say the same thing about our immigration system.

We've got to figure out a way to let people who want to work and will obey the laws into this country.  And we have to figure out a way to get this country off of its drug addiction, which fuels this whole sorry cycle of violence and crime.

The criminal process in Boston on Tuesday isn't the way to go, and everyone in the courtroom knew that.  The judge was almost apologetic, saying he didn't formulate the laws but had to follow them in imposing the sentance.

When the hearing was done I turned to my client and my partner and asked them what they thought of the proceeding.  "Very, very sad," they both said.

And it was.