Dem Con­gress­woman Called Depor­ta­tion ‘Cru­el And Unusu­al Pun­ish­ment,’ Fought Against Removal Of Refugee Charged With Molest­ing Child

As Michi­gan res­i­dents express out­rage over the death of a young woman who was killed alleged­ly by an ille­gal immi­grant in Grand Rapids, Demo­c­ra­t­ic Con­gress­woman Hillary Scholten — whose dis­trict cov­ers the city — is being crit­i­cized for her past work attempt­ing to stop the U.S. from deport­ing an Iraqi refugee charged with child molesta­tion.
Scholten, a fresh­man con­gress­woman who flipped her dis­trict from Repub­li­can to Demo­c­rat in 2022, worked as an immi­gra­tion attor­ney before she was elect­ed to Con­gress and once wrote a jour­nal arti­cle for the St. Louis Uni­ver­si­ty School of Law where she and her co-author, Mau­reen Sweeney, called depor­ta­tion “cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment.” Scholten’s work as an immi­gra­tion att …