More than two decades ago, Natalie Burke, a legal immigrant from Jamaica, was convicted of transporting and selling marijuana in Arizona. Although that is now a legal business in her state, and despite a pardon that Burke received from Arizona's governor last year, her life has been thrown into limbo by the federal government's determination to deport her based on her drug record. That attempt to exile Burke, which led to a year and a half of immigration detention and years of stress, has caused ongoing anxiety that may have contributed to a stroke she suffered while fighting to stay in the country.
Such cases are not unusual. "Thousands of people in the United States are being deported every year for drug offenses that in many cases no longer exist under state laws," Human Rights Watch (HRW) and the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) note. From 2002 to 2020, according to a new report from the two organizations, the U.S. government deported more than half a million immigrants whose most serious crimes were drug offenses. Such deportations peaked during the Obama administration but still happen 1,000 to 2,000 times a month.
