1,538 research outputs found
Rethinking Immigration’s Mandatory Detention Regime: Politics, Profit, and the Meaning of “Custody”
Immigration detention in the United States is a crisis that needs immediate attention. U.S. immigration detention facilities hold a staggering number of persons. Widely believed to have the largest immigration detention population in the world, the United States detained approximately 478,000 foreign nationals in Fiscal Year 2012. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the agency responsible for immigration enforcement, boasts that the figure is “an all-time high.” In some ways, these numbers are unsurprising, considering that the United States incarcerates approximately one in every one hundred adults within its borders—a rate five to ten times higher than any other Westernized country. An immigration law, known as the mandatory detention statute, is partially to blame for this recordbreaking immigration detention population. Under this law, facilities may hold noncitizens without providing them an opportunity to ask for release
The Dynamics of Galaxy Pairs in a Cosmological Setting
We use the Millennium Simulation, and an abundance-matching framework, to
investigate the dynamical behaviour of galaxy pairs embedded in a cosmological
context. Our main galaxy-pair sample, selected to have separations under 250
kpc/h, consists of over 1.3 million pairs at redshift z = 0, with stellar
masses greater than 10^9 Msun, probing mass ratios down to 1:1000. We use dark
matter halo membership and energy to classify our galaxy pairs. In terms of
halo membership, central-satellite pairs tend to be in isolation (in relation
to external more massive galaxies), are energetically- bound to each other, and
are also weakly-bound to a neighbouring massive galaxy. Satellite-satellite
pairs, instead, inhabit regions in close proximity to a more massive galaxy,
are energetically-unbound, and are often bound to that neighbour. We find that
60% of our paired galaxies are bound to both their companion and to a third
external object. Moreover, only 9% of our pairs resemble the kind of systems
described by idealised binary merger simulations in complete isolation. In sum,
we demonstrate the importance of properly connecting galaxy pairs to the rest
of the Universe.Comment: 25 pages, 14 figures, accepted by MNRA
The Incidence of Low-Metallicity Lyman-Limit Systems at z~3.5: Implications for the Cold-Flow Hypothesis of Baryonic Accretion
Cold accretion is a primary growth mechanism of simulated galaxies, yet
observational evidence of "cold flows" at redshifts where they should be most
efficient (-4) is scarce. In simulations, cold streams manifest as
Lyman-limit absorption systems (LLSs) with low heavy-element abundances similar
to those of the diffuse IGM. Here we report on an abundance survey of 17 H
I-selected LLSs at -4.4 which exhibit no metal absorption in SDSS
spectra. Using medium-resolution spectra obtained at Magellan, we derive
ionization-corrected metallicities (or limits) with a Markov-Chain Monte Carlo
sampling that accounts for the large uncertainty in measurements
typical of LLSs. The metal-poor LLS sample overlaps with the IGM in metallicity
and is best described by a model where are drawn from the
IGM chemical abundance distribution. These represent roughly half of all LLSs
at these redshifts, suggesting that 28-40 of the general LLS population at
could trace unprocessed gas. An ancillary sample of ten LLSs without
any a priori metal-line selection is best fit with of
metallicities drawn from the IGM. We compare these results with regions of a
moving-mesh simulation; the simulation finds only half as many baryons in
IGM-metallicity LLSs, and most of these lie beyond the virial radius of the
nearest galaxy halo. A statistically significant fraction of all LLSs have low
metallicity and therefore represent candidates for accreting gas; large-volume
simulations can establish what fraction of these candidates actually lie near
galaxies and the observational prospects for detecting the presumed hosts in
emission.Comment: 19 pages, 17 figures; Submitted to ApJ; Corrected figure 16
Mapping galaxy encounters in numerical simulations: The spatial extent of induced star formation
We employ a suite of 75 simulations of galaxies in idealised major mergers
(stellar mass ratio ~2.5:1), with a wide range of orbital parameters, to
investigate the spatial extent of interaction-induced star formation. Although
the total star formation in galaxy encounters is generally elevated relative to
isolated galaxies, we find that this elevation is a combination of intense
enhancements within the central kpc and moderately suppressed activity at large
galacto-centric radii. The radial dependence of the star formation enhancement
is stronger in the less massive galaxy than in the primary, and is also more
pronounced in mergers of more closely aligned disc spin orientations.
Conversely, these trends are almost entirely independent of the encounter's
impact parameter and orbital eccentricity. Our predictions of the radial
dependence of triggered star formation, and specifically the suppression of
star formation beyond kph-scales, will be testable with the next generation of
integral-field spectroscopic surveys.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figures, accepted by MNRA
An Integral Field Study of Abundance Gradients in Nearby LIRGs
We present for the first time metallicity maps generated using data from the
Wide Field Spectrograph (WiFeS) on the ANU 2.3m of 9 Luminous Infrared Galaxies
(LIRGs) and discuss the abundance gradients and distribution of metals in these
systems. We have carried out optical integral field spectroscopy (IFS) of
several several LIRGs in various merger phases to investigate the merger
process. In a major merger of two spiral galaxies with preexisting disk
abundance gradients, the changing distribution of metals can be used as a
tracer of gas flows in the merging system as low metallicity gas is transported
from the outskirts of each galaxy to their nuclei. We employ this fact to probe
merger properties by using the emission lines in our IFS data to calculate the
gas-phase metallicity in each system. We create abundance maps and subsequently
derive a metallicity gradient from each map. We compare our measured gradients
to merger stage as well as several possible tracers of merger progress and
observed nuclear abundances. We discuss our work in the context of previous
abundance gradient observations and compare our results to new galaxy merger
models which trace metallicity gradient. Our results agree with the observed
flattening of metallicity gradients as a merger progresses. We compare our
results with new theoretical predictions that include chemical enrichment. Our
data show remarkable agreement with these simulations.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ. 26 pages, 18 figure
What \u3cem\u3eMatter of Soram\u3c/em\u3e Got Wrong: “Child Abuse” Crimes that May Trigger Deportation Are Constantly Evolving and Even Target Good Parents
Many are surprised to learn that crime-based deportations do not necessarily make intuitive sense. Under the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA), a misdemeanor drug offense for which probation was imposed 20 years ago can be an “aggravated felony,” a category reserved for the presumably most serious offenses that result in detention, deportation, and denial of most forms of immigration relief. But a felony conviction for kidnaping may have no consequences at all. The crime of “child abuse, child neglect, or child abandonment” removal ground created by IIRIRA similarly leads to illogical results. This deportability ground, first created in 1996 by IIRIRA, is causing federal circuit courts (and arguably the Board of Immigration Appeals itself) to split over whether this deportability ground is narrow or broad. We contend that the narrow interpretation, best defended by the Tenth Circuit, is the proper one. Not only does the legislative history support a narrow reading, but the ground’s broad interpretation adopted by the Second Circuit improperly includes civil actions (not just crimes) and does not even require acts that cause injury to a child. As a result, the broad interpretation sweeps too far. It includes parents with civil violations for leaving their child unattended, either out of circumstances arising from the lack of child care for the working poor or from deliberate parenting choices known as “free-range” parenting in which children are encouraged to function independently and with limited parental supervision. The deportability ground should be interpreted narrowly—as intended by Congress— to trigger deportation only for those who are harming and preying on children
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