Immigration Prosecutions Up 110 Percent From 2004
Immigrants’ advocates have been complaining for months now that the Obama administration is cracking down hard on illegal immigration while doing nothing to help legalize their situations and create a workable immigration system.
The latest data from the Syracuse University-based Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, or TRAC, seems to confirm that. Prosecutions referred by the Immigration and Customs Agency, or ICE, were up dramatically in June — a 47 percent increase from the previous month, and a 109.6 percent increase from five years ago, under the Bush administration.
According to TRAC, which bases its studies on data released from the Justice Department, 89 percent of the June 2009 cases were classified as “immigration” prosecutions, while less than 7 percent were for drug trafficking.
In May, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano pledged to focus her agency’s efforts on lawbreaking by employers of illegal immigrants, rather than on prosecuting the immigrants themselves.
A detailed breakdown of the latest Justice Department data can be found here.
