Legal News

Immigration Cases Represent Half of Federal Prosecutions. Discuss.

By Dan Slater

Last night we watched “The Visitor,” an excellent film about a young Syrian musician, Tarek, who winds up in a New York City detention center. Midway through the movie, the man’s mother and newfound friend, played by Richard Jenkins (the deceased father from “Six Feet Under”), visit an immigration lawyer to see about extricating Tarek.

The lawyer tells them that, after 9/11, “the government’s approach has changed radically. . . It’s very black and white now. Either you belong or you don’t. Which means a lot of people who have been living here for years are suddenly being swept up and thrown into detention.”

We thought of the movie, which came out last spring, while reading today’s NLJ article on the soaring rate of immigration prosecutions during the Bush administration. According to data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, immigration prosecutions represent more than half of all federal prosecutions, up from 18% in the first fiscal year of Bush’s presidency. A total of 11,454 immigration prosecutions in September 2008 represents a 700% increase from the same month in 2001, the year Bush took office, according to TRAC.

The numbers, note the NLJ, bolster concerns expressed by federal judges in border states that their dockets have been inundated with immigration cases. The five federal districts with the largest share of immigration prosecutions in 2008 were the Southern District of Texas in Houston, the District of Arizona in Phoenix, the District of New Mexico in Albuquerque, the Western District of Texas in San Antonio and the Southern District of California in San Diego.

The leading immigration charges include illegal reentry of a deported alien, harboring illegal aliens and fraud and misuse of visas and work permits.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on January 13, 2009 (boomark / email).