Federal prosecutions of immigrants surge

Federal prosecutions of immigrants surge

Web Posted: 06/17/2008 10:23 PM CDT

By Hernán Rozemberg
Express-News

An experimental immigration enforcement program in South Texas rolled out less than three years ago — and now duplicated elsewhere — is prompting a record-setting count of federal prosecutions of first-time unauthorized border crossers, according to a report released Tuesday.

The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TARC), a nonpartisan research think tank based at Syracuse University in New York that analyzed U.S. Justice Department statistics, said the department’s San Antonio-based Western District of Texas has led the way.

TARC Report

Immigration prosecutions in the sprawling district, which stretches north to Austin and west along the border to El Paso, were already increasing when they skyrocketed this year, from 626 in January to 3,555 in March, according to the TRAC report.

For the first six months of the fiscal year that began Oct. 1, the district took on 8,036 immigration prosecutions, a 461 percent jump from the same period the previous year.

“We’ve never seen a surge like this one,” said David Burnham, co-director of TRAC, which has been researching federal prosecutions since 1986.

Though he couldn’t explain the more recent spike, immigration prosecutions in the district took off in December 2005 with the launching of the multi-agency Operation Streamline in Del Rio.

Bucking the traditional practice of promptly depositing unauthorized Mexican border crossers back to their side of the Rio Grande, the government instead detained, prosecuted and — in most cases — convicted them for illegally entering the country, a federal misdemeanor carrying a maximum six-month jail sentence.

Convinced it had found a solid deterrent against unauthorized immigration, the government has since expanded the “zero tolerance” program to southern Arizona and the Laredo area and will soon introduce it in the Rio Grande Valley.

The program’s impact is evident: Fewer unauthorized immigrants are coming across and those who get caught decide against trying their luck again, said Johnny Sutton, the U.S. attorney for the Western District.

Increased funding has come through the Justice Department’s Southwest Border Prosecution Initiative, which has added 32 prosecutors to his office since the program was created in November 2001.

The program has come under heavy political scrutiny. Federal public defenders have been forced to take on much heavier workloads without additional resources, said Marjorie Meyers, director of the Houston-based federal public defender program for South Texas.

“It’s a waste of resources,” Meyers said. “We should be focusing on major criminals and not on people coming across the border for work.”

Her argument is seconded not only by immigrant advocates, but by activists against unauthorized immigration.

Art Kownslar, director of the 125-member Central Texas chapter of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, said it’s simply not cost-effective to detain, jail and prosecute first-time, non-criminal crossers.

Toss them back and instead spend the money busting up large-scale smuggling rings, Kownslar advised.

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