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 [...]
Removals & returns, 1892-2015
As we begin to become immersed in immigration law enforcement practices under President Trump, I thought a look back at historical practices might be helpful. The information below comes entirely from DHS statistics. President Obama’s enforcement record is familiar to crimmigration.com readers. From fiscal years 2009 to 2015, the United States removed 2,749,854 people and returned another 2,080,307. No data are available for President Obama’s last full fiscal year, FY 2016. As defined by DHS for purposes of these statistics, “Removals are the compulsory and confirmed movement of an [...]
Bipartisan Immigration Imprisonment
Top Obama administration officials have made much of their concern about the country’s outsized prison population. In 2015, President Obama famously visited a federal penitentiary, the first sitting president to ever do so. In 2013, then-Attorney General Eric Holder championed sentencing reforms targeting low-level drug offenders. And Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates recently announced that the Justice Department would substantially reduce its reliance on private prison operators. But at the same time, the Obama administration has arrested and imprisoned a historically unprecedented [...]
Pretrial immigration prisoner trends, part 2
Last week I wrote about the enormous number of migrants who face confinement while they are prosecuted for federal immigration crimes. The absolute numbers are astonishing. Almost 100,000 people suspected of engaging in nothing worse than an immigration crime were held in the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service in fiscal year 2013 alone. Today I remain focused on the federal government’s pretrial immigration prison population, but I take a slight different approach. To provide some context with which to understand the number of pretrial immigration crime defendants who are confined, today [...]