“New plans pushed by President Joe Biden are hardly what one might call migrant-friendly: The plans slowly expand tools for would-be immigrants to apply to come here legally (with no guarantees, of course) while making it much more difficult for those who actually try to cross the border to get legal status.
To the former point, Biden says the U.S. will set up more Regional Processing Centers where migrants can apply for legal immigration status in the U.S., Canada, or Spain from within Latin America, rather than simply show up at the U.S-Mexico border.
Regional Processing Centers are “designed to cut smugglers out of the equation by giving people access to protection and legal pathways earlier in their migration journey, and eventually before they cross international lines at all,” notes Andrew Selee at the Migration Policy Institute. However, “little is known as yet about how these centers will function in practice,” and “they will only exist in embryonic form, if at all, by the time Title 42 ends.”
Meanwhile, Biden has enacted new restrictions for asylum-seekers as well. These include “the adoption of stricter asylum rules that make it harder to get protection in the United States for those who have crossed the border unlawfully,” notes The New York Times:
“Under the old system, which critics called “catch and release,” many migrants who reached the United States would ask for asylum and be allowed to remain in the country until their case was resolved in immigration court.
The Biden administration’s new rule presumes that those who do not use lawful pathways to enter the United States are ineligible for asylum when they show up at the border. Migrants at the border can rebut this presumption only if they sought asylum or protection in another country through which they traveled en route to the United States and were denied safe haven there, or if they can demonstrate exceptional circumstances, such as a medical emergency.
They may have a phone interview from a border holding facility with an asylum officer, and can be quickly deported if they are found ineligible to apply. Unlike under Title 42, they will receive a permanent mark on their record that bans them from entering the United States for five years, and could face criminal charges.””
“The emergence of the animal tranquilizer xylazine as a fentanyl adulterant, like the emergence of fentanyl as a heroin booster and substitute, has prompted law enforcement officials to agitate for new legal restrictions and criminal penalties. That response is fundamentally misguided, because the threat it aims to address is a familiar consequence of prohibition, which creates a black market in which drug composition is highly variable and unpredictable. Instead of recognizing their complicity in maintaining and magnifying that hazard, drug warriors always think the answer is more of the same.”
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“Why is xylazine showing up in fentanyl? For the same reasons fentanyl started showing up in heroin. As a 2014 literature review in Forensic Science International notes, “illicit drugs, such as cocaine and heroin, are often adulterated with other agents to increase bulk and enhance or mimic the illicit drug’s effects.” Because xylazine and heroin have “some similar pharmacologic effects,” the authors say, “synergistic effects may occur in humans when xylazine is use as an adulterant of heroin.”
Before the DEA was warning us about xylazine in fentanyl, it was warning us about fentanyl in heroin, and both hazards are the result of laws that the DEA is dedicated to enforcing. From the perspective of drug traffickers, fentanyl has several advantages over heroin. It is much more potent, which makes it easier to smuggle, and it can be produced much more cheaply and inconspicuously, since it does not require the cultivation of opium poppies. Xylazine has some of the same advantages: It is an inexpensive synthetic drug that can be produced without crops. And unlike fentanyl, it is not currently classified as a controlled substance, which makes it easier and less legally risky to obtain.”
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“American drug users are not clamoring for xylazine in their fentanyl, any more than they were demanding fentanyl instead of heroin. In both cases, the use of adulterants is driven by the economics of the black market. And as usual with illegal drugs, consumers do not know what they are getting. The Times underlines that point by noting one response to the proliferation of xylazine: “Addiction medicine experts,” it says, “urged that newly introduced xylazine test strips, which people can use to check the drugs they buy, be as widely distributed as fentanyl test strips.”
The fundamental problem, of course, is the dangerous uncertainty created by prohibition. Unlike alcohol, cannabis products sold by state-licensed pot shops, or legally produced, reliably dosed pharmaceuticals, black-market drugs do not come with any assurance of quality or potency. The introduction of new adulterants like xylazine increases that hazard. We have seen this story play out many times before. Whether it is vitamin E acetate in black-market THC vapes, MDMA mixed with synthetic cathinones or butylone, levamisole in cocaine, or fentanyl pressed into ersatz pain pills, prohibition reliably makes drug use more dangerous.”
“The distinguishing feature of “stand your ground” laws is that they eliminate the duty to retreat for people confronted by threats of violence in public places. The shooting of Ralph Yarl did not happen in a public place; it happened on the doorstep of the man who shot him. The shooting of Kaylin Gillis likewise happened on the property of the man who killed her. New York, in any event, is not one of the 28 states with “stand your ground” laws. And as Reason’s J.D. Tuccille notes, the Texas cheerleaders, Payton Washington and Heather Roth, “were chased by their assailants, which isn’t self-defense by any understanding.”
So why does NPR suggest that any of these defendants might successfully invoke a “stand your ground” defense? You got me.
A recent New York Times article that begins by citing the shootings in Missouri and New York is equally hazy on the relevance of “stand your ground” laws. Reporter Adeel Hassan compounds the confusion by mentioning a Florida jury’s 2013 acquittal of George Zimmerman, who was charged with second-degree murder and manslaughter after he shot 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.
Zimmerman argued that he reasonably feared for his life when Martin pinned him to the ground, punched him, and smacked his head against the pavement. That account was supported by physical evidence and witness testimony. Given those circumstances, the absence of a duty to retreat did not figure in Zimmerman’s defense or in the verdict.
Politico reporter Brakkton Booker nevertheless asserts that Florida’s “stand your ground” law was “central” to Zimmerman’s trial. Booker also thinks the shooting of Ralph Yarl “has all the ingredients to revive the national debate over ‘stand your ground’ laws,” although he never explains why.
Hassan at least correctly distinguishes between “the common-law ‘castle doctrine'” and “stand your ground” laws. The castle doctrine says people have no duty to retreat when they are confronted by intruders in their own homes. “Stand your ground” laws, Hassan notes, “go further” because they “apply anyplace where a person has a legal right to be, not just at home.” He cites Florida’s law as an example.”
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“Texas has a similar law. It allows someone to use deadly force when he “reasonably believes” it is “immediately necessary” to protect himself against the “use or attempted use of unlawful deadly force.” It adds that “a person who has a right to be present at the location where the force is used, who has not provoked the person against whom the force is used, and who is not engaged in criminal activity at the time the force is used is not required to retreat before using force as described by this section.””
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“Homicide defendants do sometimes invoke the absence of a duty to retreat in public places, although often implausibly and unsuccessfully, and there is a legitimate debate about whether that extension of self-defense law is fair and prudent. But that debate is muddied whenever news outlets bring up the controversy in contexts where it is plainly irrelevant.”
“a Texas jury found Army Sgt. Daniel Perry guilty of murdering Garrett Foster, a protester he encountered at a Black Lives Matter demonstration in July 2020. Less than 24 hours after that verdict, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said he would pardon Perry if asked.
Abbott’s hasty announcement, which seemed to be driven by conservative complaints that Perry had been unjustly prosecuted for shooting Foster in self-defense, illustrates how political prejudices convert empirical questions into tests of team loyalty. That bipartisan tendency is the antithesis of what jurors are supposed to do when they are confronted by the clashing narratives of a criminal trial.
Abbott took it for granted that Perry’s account of what happened the night he killed Foster was accurate. Texas has “one of the strongest” self-defense laws in the country, the governor wrote on Twitter, and that law “cannot be nullified by a jury or a progressive District Attorney.”
Contrary to the implication, the jurors who convicted Perry did not ignore the state’s self-defense law, which allows someone to use deadly force when he “reasonably believes” it is “immediately necessary” to protect himself against the “use or attempted use of unlawful deadly force.” The jurors simply did not believe the circumstances of Foster’s death met those requirements.”