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DOJ Report Details Decline in Border Prosecutions Under Biden
Takeaways from the ‘Prosecuting Immigration Crimes Report’, and the ‘why’ of Biden nonenforcement
By Andrew R. Arthur on April 17, 2024
To reduce illegal entries, DHS must deter migrants from coming illegally, and the two best deterrents Congress has given the department to deter illegal entrants (aside from removal) are detention — which is mandated for all arriving aliens encountered at the borders and ports — and prosecution under section 275 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) for “improper entry”. The main reason for the migrant surge that commenced shortly after President Biden took office is his refusal to comply with Congress’ detention mandate, as a federal judge held last March, but now DOJ’s “Prosecuting Immigration Crimes Report” (PICR) details the extent to which migrant prosecutions have declined in the past five years, as well.
PICR. In its latest iterations, the PICR is little more than a compilation of data prepared by DOJ’s Office of United States Attorneys, showing the number of aliens who have been prosecuted for various immigration-related offenses by court and nationality.
That’s a shame, because the August 2019 version of the PICR was a robust narrative that not only fleshed out the raw data and put it into context, but also offered examples of some of the most serious offenders implicated in immigration crimes.
For example, there was this, out of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida:
Ramon Lopez-Alvarado, an undocumented alien from Mexico, was sentenced to 14 years in prison for illegal reentry into the United States and failure to register as a sex offender under the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA). Lopez-Alvarado pled guilty to failing to register as a sex offender and a jury found him guilty of illegal reentry. Lopez-Alvarado had previously been removed from the United States on three occasions after being convicted of committing lewd acts on a child and failing to register as a sex offender. When Lopez-Alvarado illegally returned to the United States, he again failed to register as required by SORNA. [Emphasis added.]
https://cis.org/Arthur/DOJ-Report-Details-Decline-Border-Prosecutions-Under-Biden
