In court, shackled and wearing a jumpsuit, he didn’t look like the poster child for the opiate crisis. He wasn’t white. He didn’t have a good education. He didn’t come from a wealthy family. To the judge, he wasn’t a victim. He was a “dealer.”
This man ― let’s call him Samuel ― was the father of four U.S.-born children whose favorite place for family outings was Applebee’s. He was also a green-card holder who was now facing deportation. He had come to the United States in his teens, fleeing gang violence and a life marked by severe neglect and parental abandonment. When a serious accident landed him in a full body cast, bedridden for months, he took opiates prescribed by his doctor. He became addicted.
Like many people struggling with substance abuse[1], Samuel sold drugs sporadically to support his own use. He was convicted for selling one Percocet to an undercover cop and ordered to be deported to a country where gang members had already tried to kill him. His children would be left fatherless just as he had been left as a child.
The opioid epidemic and our broken immigration system ― the two biggest crises facing America today ― are more connected than many people think. While the face of the opioid crisis has long been that of young white suburban adults or the housewives next door[2], black and brown people face just as great a risk of addiction[3] and a greater risk of being criminalized for it. Among immigrants, the punishment for addiction can mean deportation.
One in five immigrants deported between January 2012 and October 2017 under the Secure Communities program had a nonviolent drug offense as their most serious conviction, according to TRAC Reports data[4]. The reasons