Litigation

Immigration Cases Continue Rising

By Peter Hardin

Immigration prosecutions by federal authorities jumped 16 percent in the past fiscal year and helped to fuel an increase in overall federal prosecutions of nearly 9 percent, to an all-time high, the Houston Chronicle reported.

The newspaper based its article on data provided by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University. According to TRAC, immigration filings “now make up well over half of all criminal cases brought by the government.” There were 91,899 immigration prosecutions recorded in the fiscal year, and 169,612 overall federal prosecutions.

Both the federal government’s crackdown on illegal immigration since 2001, and the huge challenges now facing the immigration court system, are discussed at Justice at Stake’s issues page on the topic, and you can check out earlier Gavel Grab posts about the heavy caseload by clicking here.

Full post as published by The Gavel on December 22, 2009 (boomark / email).