Putting TRAC to Work
Policy and Public Interest Groups
A Joint Report of Migration and Refugee Services/United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and The Center for Migration Studies
May 11, 2015
Unlocking Human Dignity: A Plan to Transform the U.S. Immigrant Detention System By Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Migration
	Illegal entry has long been a crime. However, ordinary immigration offenses were historically treated as violations of “civil” law, leading to deportation proceedings. Between 1986 and 1996, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) referred on average fewer than 10,000 immigration cases per year for criminal prosecution, and fewer than 8,500 persons per year (on average) were actually prosecuted (TRAC 2002), typically for egregious immigration violations. Yet over the last two decades, immigration-related prosecutions have risen sharply......[Citing TRAC research]. External Link, PDF file
	Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, Syracuse University Copyright 2015