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Criminal prosecutions of people arrested trying to cross the southwest border illegally surged in April, following an order from Attorney General Jeff Sessions that adopted a “zero tolerance” policy for unlawful entry.
Federal prosecutors accepted 8,298 unlawful entry case referrals from Customs and Border Protection in April, about 30 percent more than the 6,368 they took on in March, according to a report released Monday by Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC). The prosecution data is based on records of cases referred by CBP, which TRAC receives as a result of its successful open records lawsuit against the government.
Prosecutions of illegal border crossers in April were up even higher when compared to the beginning of the calendar year. There were roughly 60 percent more unlawful entry prosecutions in April than in January, when prosecutors accepted 5,191 such cases from CBP.
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