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The Border Patrol continues to grow with more operations and many more agents—from 1,746 agents in 1975 to 11,106 in 1995 and more than 20,000 agents by the end of the Bush administration. ..........Drug violence has risen in recent years in Mexico, with drug-related murders doubling in Mexican border cities between 2007 and 2008 alone. Despite these reports of drug trafficking and human smuggling, the numbers of felony alien smuggling prosecutions in federal criminal courts along the border did not increase, and drug prosecutions actually declined during this same time period..........(In December 2008, criminal immigration cases made up the majority of federal criminal prosecutions nationwide, outnumbering all white collar civil rights, environmental, drug-related, and other criminal cases combined. Furthermore, between 2000 and 2007, white collar prosecutions fell by 27%, weapons prosecutions by 21%, organized crime by 48%, public corruption prosecutions by 14%, and drug prosecutions by 20%.)...........Some researchers have tried to investigate the underlying criminal convictions of “criminal aliens” deported by ICE. ICE, however, has responded by claiming that it was impossible to track everyone in their system from apprehension to removal or release. Despite such problems with accessing detailed data, the limited information available suggests that the overwhelming majority of individuals identified by Secure Communities do not fit the profile of “dangerous criminal aliens.” [citing TRAC research]
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