“Latin American Dictators Love South Florida”: U.S. Immigration Law and Accountability for Violations of Human Rights

In 1999, a Michigan Journal of International Law article outlined a legislative proposal for the U.S. Congress to “use immigration law to protect human rights.”  The authors proposed amending the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) to expand the list of human rights related charges of inadmissibility and removability to include, among others, acts of torture and extrajudicial killing.   In each subsequent session of Congress, bills model on the proposal were introduced.   Specific Latin American military and political figures implicated in atrocities in their home countries and known to be residing in the United States were referenced in the legislative debates as examples of the existing loopholes in the INA and the urgent need to close them.  The so-called “Anti-Atrocity Alien Deportation Act” was ultimately enacted as part of the 2004 Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act (Intel Reform Act). 

This paper places the torture and extrajudicial killing charges in the INA within the longer history of human rights related U.S. immigration laws as well as within the context of the more recent international turn toward accountability for state sponsored violations of human rights.  Through U.S. Congressional records, domestic and international press, and other sources, this paper examines the legislative history of the amendment as well as its enforcement, especially as related to Latin America and Latin Americans.   It analyzes when and why the history of U.S.-Latin American relations is invoked and how that history is constructed, debated, and revised.