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The Texas Tribune
June 15, 2011

Illegal Re-entry Cases Surge Under Obama
By Julian Aguilar


U.S. Department of Justice data obtained from the Transactional Records Access Clearing House shows that prosecutions for attempting to enter the country after having “been denied admission, excluded, deported, or removed” are on pace to surpass 37,100 for the year, an increase of more than 1,200 from 2010. If the trend continues, the Obama administration will have prosecuted more illegal immigrants for illegal re-entry in his first term than George W. Bush’s administration did in his two terms combined. From 2001 to 2008, 111,920 aliens were prosecuted for the crime — 42,465 in Bush’s first term and 69,455 in his second, an annual average of about 10,600 and 17,360, respectively. Obama's administration is averaging about 34,355 annually and is on pace to surpass 103,000 in his first three years. TRAC estimates that almost half all criminal immigration cases prosecuted and nearly a quarter of all criminal prosecutions of any kind involve charges of illegal reentry, which is a federal felony. TRAC estimates the average sentence for an immigrant convicted of the offense to be about 14 months.


Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, Syracuse University
Copyright 2011
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