Clearing Your Criminal Record is More Important Now Than Ever

With deportation forces sweeping across the country, searching for people who have committed minor crimes, now may be the best time to begin the process of clearing your criminal record

Deportation and Minor Crimes

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been performing major “roundup” operations, detaining hundreds of people with felony, misdemeanor, and even no criminal convictions.

“Before, we used to be told, ‘You can’t arrest those people,’ and we’d be disciplined for being insubordinate if we did,” said an ICE agent who’s been on the force for more than a decade. “Now those people are priorities again, and there are a lot of them here.”

Customs and Border Protection agents are now checking passenger IDs on domestic flights, in some cases, but according to the American Civil Liberties Union, that’s not normal.

“They’ll occasionally pull someone off of a flight, or officers will come on and make an arrest,” said Jordan Wells, a staff attorney with the New York Civil Liberties Union. “It’s a much more surgical thing than setting up a dragnet. That’s what is so alarming about the way that this played out.”

Is Now the Right Time to Clear Your Criminal Record?

If you have a criminal record, it may be a good idea to talk to a Chicago expungement lawyer regardless of your immigration or naturalization status. The federal government had been working on a plan to phase out the federal government’s use of private prisons, but that plan has now been scrapped—and just in time for the White House to instruct the Department of Justice to crack down on recreational marijuana use

The bottom line: you need a clean record, and we may be able to help you if you’re eligible for expungement

Call us at 847-920-4540 for a free criminal record clearing consultation with a Chicago expungement lawyer