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 [...]
Harboring prosecutions are rare, but attorney general wants more
Earlier this month, federal prosecutors in Arizona brought criminal charges against a local activist who devotes his free time to helping migrants survive the deadly desert route northward. Scott Daniel Warren, prosecutors allege in a complaint accusing him of violating a federal law against harboring migrants, provided two people with “food, water, beds, and clean clothes” for three days. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has been a vocal proponent of deploying the Justice Department’s extensive resources against migrants. In a April 2017, he urged prosecutors to ramp up criminal charges for [...]
US prison population drops a bit in 2016, including for immigration crimes
The number of people locked up in the United States continued a recent trend of modest decreases in 2016. Along with a one percent decline to the total number of people in a state or federal prison, the nation’s population of immigration prisoners also dropped, data released by the federal government this week reveal. People sentenced to federal prison for at least one year dropped 1.4 percent to 1,505,397 people, the Bureau of Justice Statistics reported. Of those, 189,192 were in the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons due to conviction for a federal offense. Approximately twenty-one [...]
Detention and removal numbers down in FY 17
The number of people detained and removed by DHS during the 2017 fiscal year dropped when compared to 2016, the last full fiscal year under President Obama. Government data released Tuesday show that DHS detained 323,591 people and removed 226,119 people in FY 2017, most of which elapsed under President Trump’s watch. ICE’s detention network famously reached a massive scale under President Obama. Tuesday’s release indicates that ICE held about 30,000 fewer people over the course of 2017. Described as an “initial book-in,” ICE took into its custody 352,882 people in FY 2016 and 307,342 [...]
Immigration prison population since 1990s
Immigration imprisonment is a common feature of the United States legal system’s regulation of migration. On the civil side, ICE’s routine confinement of people suspected of violating immigration law is well-known. Often overlooked, however, are ICE’s partners on the criminal end of the immigration imprisonment spectrum. Though most immigration law violations are civil infractions that result, at most, in removal from the United States, some features of federal immigration law are undeniably criminal offenses. Indeed, in recent years, prosecutions for immigration offense now constitute the [...]
ICE arrests 60,000 in Trump’s first five months
Under President Trump’s watch, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has kept busy arresting tens of thousands of migrants, newly obtained data reveal. From January 20, the date of Trump’s inauguration, and June 7, ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) division took into its custody 58,954 people. Of those, 15,594, or twenty-six percent of the total, had not been convicted of any crime. Almost three-quarters of ERO’s arrestees—43,360 individuals—had been convicted of some crime, but the offenses varied tremendously. The most common offenses involved vehicular traffic [...]
Immigration continues lead role in federal criminal prosecutions
The federal criminal justice system is squarely focused on immigration activity. In the 2016 fiscal year, 68,314 defendants were prosecuted in federal courts for federal immigration crimes, the administrative office that helps operate the federal courts reported this month. This represents forty-three percent of all people prosecuted for federal crimes that year. Two crimes made up the bulk of federal immigration crime prosecutions. Illegal entry, a misdemeanor, and its felony counterpart, illegal reentry. No other category of federal crime came near immigration to receive top billing among [...]