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The Trump administration’s push to prosecute people for crossing the border without authorization is limiting the government’s ability to prosecute people who commit other crimes, according to government data obtained by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a research center at Syracuse University.
TRAC’s analysis of the data shows that the number of immigration-related prosecutions filed along the border spiked by 79 percent between March and June. During the same period, the number of non-immigration prosecutions declined by 35 percent. Non-immigration offenses accounted for just 6 percent of prosecutions in districts along the Mexican border in June, compared to 14 percent in March.
TRAC concluded that unless non-immigration crime is “suddenly less prevalent” than before, the figures imply that more non-immigration crimes in the border regions are going unprosecuted. In Arizona, for example, the data show that drug prosecutions under a statute that is usually enforced by US Customs and Border Protections have declined sharply in recent months.
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