President Donald Trump he boasts of arresting immigrants that he says endanger the security of the United States. However, official figures reveal that the Department of Justice led by William Barr has been reducing the number of criminal cases initiated against immigrants for a year.
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The Department of Justice (DOJ) presented 8,315 new criminal immigration cases in October last year, 37.4% less compared to 13,286 initiated in the same month of the previous year.
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The decline in the number of cases initiated by the DOJ also occurred in the midst of a reduction in the number of cases brought by the immigration agencies of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
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Specifically, the Border Patrol, the Office of Immigration and Customs Control (ICE) and the Office of Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) referred in October 2019 to the Department of Justice 4.2% less criminal cases that in October of the previous year, according to the latest data to which the Transactional Records Information and Access Center (TRAC) of Syracuse University had access.
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TRAC emphasizes that while these offices can investigate both civil and criminal violations, they can only take action in civil matters and must send any criminal matter to the Department of Justice, which ultimately decides whether to proceed with a criminal case.
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The graph below shows how the three immigration agencies – CBP, ICE and USCIS – have brought criminal cases before the Department of Justice. CBP is by far the agency that presents the most cases to the DOJ. The graph shows a strong increase in the cases that CBP required of a criminal accusation by the Department of Justice between the beginning of 2018 until October of that year.
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TRAC Finds Sharp Decline in Criminal Immigration Prosecutions
In 2019 criminal prosecutions referred to the Department of Justice by immigration agencies fell 37% over the previous year. We offer an explanation.@TheJusticeDept @ICEgov @CBP @USCIS https://t.co/Do2XVqUf27 pic.twitter.com/mCKKds8gOA
& mdash; TRAC Reports (@TRACReports) February 12, 2020
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In that period, the TRAC detailed, the cases that more than doubled, from 5,000 at the beginning of 2018 to about 11,000 in October 2018. Then, they began to decline steadily in the last year.
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The ‘hard hand’ of Sessions
In their analysis, the researchers at the university wondered how it was possible that the number of cases referred had decreased when, at the border, migrant crossings had increased. “The simplest explanation should be that, if the percentage of criminal referrals is constant, the increase in the number of crossings at the border leads to an increase in referrals. However, the trend in CBP referrals does not show accurately the Border Patrol detentions trend along the southwest border, “said the TRAC.
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“In fact, just when the arrests began to increase significantly in March 2019, the (DOJ) accusations began to fall.”he added.
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But why have they fallen if Trump’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy is supposed to remain the same? The answer, according to the TRAC, has a first and last name: the former attorney general Jeff Sessions.
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“We found that the referrals were not driven by illegal border crossing rates, but by policy decisions demanding that CBP and federal prosecutors focus on specific crimes in pursuit of a federal indictment,” explained the TRAC. That requirement had its highest point in April 2018, recalls the TRAC, when Sessions announced the ‘zero tolerance’ policy for those who cross the border illegally. And this led to an increase in criminal cases initiated against migrants.
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However, with the departure of Sessions in November 2018, those cases began to decline.
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“Following the resignation of former Attorney General Sessions, who personally advocated that criminal cases be prioritized by illegal entry (into the country), those accusations fell. Other lawsuits competed for personal attention,” the TRAC said.
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Sessions left the Justice Department after 22 months in which he changed as many rules as he could under the umbrella of Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy. From taking away powers of immigration judges to canceling thousands of deportation cases that remained asleep, some for more than two decades.
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However, the politician failed to comply with his ‘zero tolerance’, as the TRAC numbers show that the number of criminal cases he initiated never equaled the number of people who crossed the border illegally.
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