Immigration Prosecutions Climb With Record Deportations: Study

[pampango]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/02/immigration-prosecution-deportation-study_n_817323.html

As politicians call for more immigration enforcement and border security, a report released Wednesday found that the Obama administration is already focusing its efforts on immigration at the expense of other federal law-enforcement efforts.

Despite across-the-board staffing increases in federal law enforcement, only immigration enforcement -- particularly along the United States-Mexico border -- has increased substantially over the past two years, while other federal prosecutions in most of the country fell. Prosecutions for non-immigration felonies in non-border areas shrunk by 6 percent, according to government data analyzed by the nonpartisan Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.

At the same time, the Obama administration made an unprecedented effort to curb illegal immigration, sending record levels of money and troops to the border and more than doubling petty immigration enforcement in southwestern districts.

The current administration has repeatedly rebuffed claims that it has not seriously policed the southwestern border. In fact, federal law enforcement in the five districts along the border with Mexico makes up nearly half of all federal prosecutions, even though those districts contain less than 10 percent of the population, according to TRAC data.

" inaccurate to state, as too many have, that the border is overrun with violence and out of control," Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said on Monday in El Paso, Texas. "This statement, often made only to score political points, is just plain wrong."