“She has a sixth-grade education. She didn’t know she wasn’t legal,” Ortega’s lawyer told The New York Times in 2017. “She can own property; she can serve in the military; she can get a job; she can pay taxes. But she can’t vote, and she didn’t know that.”

Meanwhile, Cohen will spend a comfortable three years in what Forbes named one of “America’s 10 cushiest prisons,” New York’s Federal Correctional Institution, Otisville. He will get to play bocce and tennis with other white-collar criminals. He’ll get to dine on kosher foods like matzo ball soup. And by the time he’s released, people like Noble, Brown, Mason and Ortega will still be trapped.

None of this is to suggest that Cohen should be more harshly punished in the eyes of the law. But if a wealthy white man can help the president attempt to erode democracy and still make out better than most of our nation’s most vulnerable citizens, maybe it’s time we rethink how our justice system operates.