At the Frontlines of the Fight for Democracy
Dear Friends,
In one of his very first acts this January, President Trump called for use of the death penalty in every case in which an undocumented migrant commits a capital crime. As Cathy Buerger wrote in her op ed in Just Security, “the order signals that some people—by virtue of who they are—deserve to be killed.” President Trump’s Order is blatantly unconstitutional, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t caused profound harm. President Trump’s call to seek the death penalty against undocumented migrants exemplifies how our criminal-legal system is the frontline of our fight for Democracy.
At Texas Defender Service, we are seeing people targeted with the death penalty because of who they are. Over 20% of our clients are migrants without legal status. Texas is a border state with population of 1.7 million people without legal documentation, or 5.5% of our population. Frequently, prosecutors here face political pressure to press the death penalty not because of the underlying facts of a criminal case, but because of a person’s lack of legal immigration status. As Buerger said in her op ed, the President’s Order seeks to “codify a distinction between who may live and who must die” based on their identity, which reinforces “a State-led narrative of fear” that “undocumented migrants constitute a threat so great that they are more deserving of the death penalty than others.” This kind of narrative puts undocumented people at risk and “fosters the belief that violence against them is justified, even necessary.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky once wrote, “The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.”So, too, we can measure the health of our Democracy by examining whether our criminal-legal institutions are upholding the fundamental values of fairness and due process. What we see in Texas should serve as a warning and call to all of us. At Texas Defender Service, we fight every day for our clients and for justice; this is also a fight for the survival of our Democratic institutions.
With gratitude,
Burke Butler
Executive Director
Texas Defender Service
