By Adrian Rocha
El Paso is a place where two cultures play catch, where Spanish and English crisscross like shoelaces and end up knotted. The city’s proximity to Mexico has long meant its inhabitants, despite being the furthest you could get from D.C. in Texas, are closest to the problems caused by decades of federal inaction on immigration policy.
What is less discussed, though, is the city’s role as the catalyst in yet another complicated farrago of law and public policy: the criminalization of cannabis and the subsequent war on drugs that the federal government continues to wage.
In 1915, El Paso Sheriff Stanley Good cajoled city officials into making El Paso the first city in the nation to prohibit cannabis. This followed the sensationalized reporting of a Mexican national in Ciudad Juarez who was “driven to insanity by the ingestion of cannabis” in 1913.
Later that same year, the federal government would amend the Food and Drugs Act to ban the importation of cannabis for non-medical purposes. As part of this newly enacted prohibition, Department of Agriculture agent Reginald Smith was sent to Texas to investigate the efficacy of this new policy.
In a twist of irony, Smith’s report documented that the vast majority of cannabis in El Paso and along the Rio Grande Valley was not imported at all but instead was from U.S. pharmaceutical companies. In fact, there is evidence to suggest that the bulk of cannabis in El Paso was actually flowing from the United States to Mexico.
America’s stance on cannabis since then has mellowed significantly, and in 2012, Colorado and Washington became the first states to legalize adult-use cannabis. Now, 24 states have legalized recreational cannabis, and two-thirds of states allow access for medicinal purposes. Even at the federal level, President Biden, who’s long been in support of and sometimes responsible for the expansion of the war on drugs, has recently softened his stance on cannabis.
In October 2022, President Biden announced his administration would provide pardons for individuals with federal simple marijuana possession offenses. His administration doubled down on this pardon initiative during the 2023 holiday season by extending the eligibility criteria to include additional variations of simple possession offenses. The Justice Department estimates roughly 13,000 people are eligible for relief under the executive action. Crucially, both these proclamations excluded undocumented noncitizens from being considered for this relief.
The United States has allowed even minor criminal violations to serve as the basis for an individual’s deportation since the passage of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act in 1996.
Now, although the Biden administration believes possession of cannabis offenses pose such little risk to public safety that he has offered to pardon these offenses, he has not sought to protect individuals from being deported for the same type of convictions.
Recent data from the 2023 U.S. Hispanic Cannabis Council shows Hispanics overwhelmingly support legalizing cannabis and achieving retroactive relief for those individuals criminalized by cannabis. Seventy-eight percent of Hispanics polled indicated their support for ending federal prohibition, and 70% reported supporting criminal record clearance and sentence review policies to ensure that individuals can have their criminal history reevaluated in light of legalization.
This high level of support should not come as a surprise. Despite similar usage rates among races, the criminalization of cannabis has disproportionately thrust people of color into the legal system and, often, the immigration system, too. Hispanics are intimately aware of the consequences of the zealous enforcement of cannabis prohibition every time there is a family gathering and a tĂa, primo, or compa isn’t present but prayed for.
As an organization that works at the intersection of cannabis and criminal justice, we know it is not just those closest to the border who risk deportation for a past cannabis conviction.
Since 2022, we have been fighting to protect Courtney Stubbs from deportation back to Jamaica. Despite being convicted of a cannabis offense more than 20 years ago, successfully completing his sentence, having no further contact with the criminal system, remaining gainfully employed, and being a loving and caring father to his three children and extended family, Stubbs cannot shed the severe immigration consequences imposed on him for an offense that the president and vice president have both conceded no one should be in jail for.
In the face of continued congressional inertia, the only relief from immigration detention and deportation for individuals with simple federal marijuana possession offenses is a presidential pardon.
With the stroke of a pen, the president could extend the eligibility of his cannabis pardon program to include undocumented noncitizens, protecting thousands of individuals from deportation. Those loved ones whose families are made whole by Biden’s decision would surely keep this in mind come November.
El Pasoan Adrian Rocha is an Eastwood High School graduate and the policy manager for the Last Prisoner Project, a non-profit dedicated to freeing those incarcerated due to the war on drugs, reuniting their families, and helping them rebuild their lives. Visit www.lastprisonerproject.org or text FREEDOM to 24365 to learn more.
