ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the evolution of crimmigration law. It presents the case that crimmigration has distinguished itself in a way that creates a distinct legal field, that its reach is transnational, that it impacts not just legal rules but the daily decisions of immigration agents and police officers, and that it has seeped into the nooks and crannies of the lives of citizens and noncitizens. The chapter examines the response to crimmigration law, focusing on the legal actors, advocates, and researchers striving to understand and ameliorate the excesses of crimmigration law. Crimmigration has coalesced as a social, political, and legal phenomenon within the past, with a swiftness that has taken advocates, adjudicators, and other repeat players in immigration and criminal law by surprise. Crimmigration has made monumental changes in immigration and criminal law, as well as border control and internal policing. Crimmigration has stirred up the political forces driven by public perceptions about the risks that migration poses.
