Over the summer, the Trump administration made headlines worldwide when it decided to separate families arriving at the border while criminally prosecuting the parents. This was an especially cruel instance of using the bludgeon of criminal law to target migration. But it wasn’t the first time this happened. Across the Southwest, criminal prosecution of migration has been a common feature in federal courthouses for many years. Many of these individuals are sentenced to time-served, meaning they do little jail time beyond what they spend behind bars awaiting prosecution. Government data that [...]
Separating families is a choice
When President Obama announced Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, his administration’s policy of pushing young unauthorized migrants to the bottom of the immigration law-enforcement priority list, Republicans complained that focusing on some legal violations over others was equivalent to not enforcing the law. When Obama used his discretion to extend similar protections to parents of United States citizens, Republican legislators successfully took to the courts to block him. Within days of entering the White House, President Trump issued an executive order proclaiming, “We cannot [...]
Criminal prosecution data reveal longstanding practices & disparities
Federal prosecutors filed criminal charges against more migrants in May 2018 than at any other time since Donald Trump became president, newly-released government statistics obtained by the Transactional Access Records Clearinghouse reveal. But despite the administration’s “zero tolerance” approach, most people apprehended by Customs and Border Protection officers never found themselves in a criminal courtroom. Only about one-third of people apprehended in May outside of ports-of-entry were prosecuted criminally. As the report’s authors point out, this shows that the zero tolerance policy [...]
Immigration crime cases fill federal courts in 2017
Immigration crime has become a common feature of federal court dockets across the United States. I previously wrote that in fiscal year 2016 there were 68,314 defendants prosecuted for federal immigration crimes (see similar accounts of 2012 and 2010). Approximately 10,000 fewer defendants had their cases disposed of in the 2017 fiscal year, which might explain a small drop in immigration-related imprisonment, but the overall trend as similar. In the fiscal year that began under President Obama and ended under President Trump, there were more defendants prosecuted for immigration crimes before [...]
4 ICE prisoners dead so far in FY18
Seven months into the federal government’s fiscal year and so far at least four people saw their final day in ICE’s custody. The four deceased were all men: Kamyar Samimi, 64; Yulio Castro-Garrido, 33; Luis Ramirez-Marcano, 59; and Gourgen Mirimanian, 54. All but Mr. Ramirez-Marcano were held in private facilities prior to their deaths. The four deaths through April 30 put ICE on track to come well within its typical annual death toll. ICE’s recent uptick in the number of detainees held daily, however, suggests that we might see an increase in the second half of the fiscal year. As the [...]
ICE transitioned from Obama to Trump with record high daily detention population
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency continues to ramp up hardline immigration policing practices, government-issued statistics about the number of detainees indicate. In the transition year that began under President Obama and ended under President Trump, ICE surpassed previous highs in its immigration detention network. In fiscal year 2017—running from October 1, 2016 to September 30, 2017—ICE detained, on average, 38,106 people every day. Called the “average daily population” in official reports, the FY 2017 figure is an increase of approximately 4,000 from the previous year [...]
ICE detention population closed Obama era at record daily high
By at least one important measure, the immigration detention system run by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency closed the Obama era holding more people than ever before. During the 2016 fiscal year—the period from October 1, 2015 to September 30, 2016—ICE detained, on average, 34,376 people per day. See DHS, Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, Budget Overview, Fiscal Year 2018, Congressional Justification ICE-14. According to ICE, it paid, on average, $128.88 per bed per day. Id. Compared to the rest of Obama’s tenure, the average daily population is a slight uptick from FY [...]
Immigration crime cases in the 1970s
Since the last years of the second term of President George W. Bush, immigration crime prosecutions have dominated the national picture of criminal dockets in the federal district courts. In 2016, for example, I previously reported about a staggering 68,314 immigration crime cases disposed of that year. No other category of offense even came close. The second most prosecuted category of offense that year, drug crimes, numbered less than 24,000 prosecutions. It hasn’t always been this way. Traditionally, prosecutors didn’t seek criminal penalties for people who violated immigration law. At [...]
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