Anti-Drug Abuse Act Creates "Aggravated Felony" Category, Merging War on Drugs with Deportation

President Ronald Reagan signs the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988, introducing the “aggravated felony” concept into immigration law for the first time. Initially defined narrowly to include murder, federal drug trafficking, and illicit trafficking in certain firearms or destructive devices, the category carries severe immigration consequences including mandatory detention, deportation without possibility of relief, and permanent bars to future entry. The law merges the War on Drugs with immigration enforcement, creating legal infrastructure that subsequent legislation dramatically expands to encompass a vast array of offenses bearing no relationship to the original categories.

The 1988 Act represents the first step in what scholars term “crimmigration”—the convergence of criminal justice and immigration enforcement into a unified system of racialized social control. By designating certain convictions as triggering automatic deportation without judicial discretion, the law treats immigrants as a permanent underclass whose civil offenses merit banishment rather than conventional punishment. The mandatory nature of these provisions eliminates consideration of individual circumstances, family ties, length of residence, or rehabilitation, reducing immigrants to their worst moment regardless of subsequent life trajectory.

Subsequent legislation explosively expands the aggravated felony category. The Immigration Act of 1990 adds money laundering and firearms offenses. The 1994 crime bill adds additional offenses. The 1996 AEDPA and IIRIRA laws add theft, burglary, tax evasion, forgery, and any offense carrying a one-year sentence—regardless of whether the sentence is served or suspended. These expansions apply retroactively, meaning convictions that carried no immigration consequences when entered suddenly become grounds for deportation. By 2020, over 50 offense categories qualify as aggravated felonies, and the term “felony” is misleading: many classified aggravated felonies are misdemeanors under state law. The 1988 law establishes the template for using drug war rhetoric to justify immigration enforcement expansion, a pattern that persists as enforcement advocates invoke crime and security to justify ever-broader removal authority.