Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Greetings. The latest available data from the Justice Department show that during April 2017 the government reported 4,434 new criminal prosecutions as a result of referrals from the immigration and customs components of the Department of Homeland Security. According to the case-by-case information analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University, prosecutions fell 17.5 percent from the previous month, and have dropped 42.9 percent from the levels recorded a year ago during April 2016.
These trends do not as yet reflect the impact of Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ April 11, 2017 directive calling for the stepped up use of criminal sanctions in the immigration area.
Criminal prosecutions remain concentrated in the five districts along the nation’s southwest border with Mexico. In April, New Mexico was the most active of these five relative to its population size, and the Southern District of California (San Diego) was second. Per capita prosecution rates in these two districts far surpassed those for the Southern District of Texas (Houston) and the Western District of Texas (San Antonio) that had ranked first and second a year ago.
In April immigration-related criminal prosecutions from DHS referrals had fallen to around 42 percent of federal prosecutions of all types. When customs and drug-related DHS referrals were added, DHS accounted for roughly half of all federal criminal prosecutions, down from almost two out of three a year ago.
To see the full report go to:
http://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/472/
In addition, many of TRAC’s free query tools – which track new DHS filings, court dispositions, the handling of juvenile cases and much more – have now been updated through April 2017. For an index to the full list of TRAC’s immigration tools go to:
http://trac.syr.edu/imm/tools/
If you want to be sure to receive notifications whenever updated data become available, sign up at:
http://tracfed.syr.edu/cgi-bin/tracuser.pl?pub=1&list=imm
or follow us on Twitter @tracreports or like us on Facebook:
http://facebook.com/tracreports
TRAC is self-supporting and depends on foundation grants, individual contributions and subscription fees for the funding needed to obtain, analyze and publish the data we collect on the activities of the U.S. federal government. To help support TRAC’s ongoing efforts, go to:
http://trac.syr.edu/cgi-bin/sponsor/sponsor.pl
David Burnham and Susan B. Long, co-directors
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse
Syracuse University
Suite 360, Newhouse II
Syracuse, NY 13244-2100
315-443-3563
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As pointed out by TRAC, this report does not reflect the possible impact of Attorney General Sessions’s “fill up the jails” speech on April 11.
PWS
06-15-17