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In the late 1990s, following the Clinton administration’s high-profile border patrol operations and the passage of the IIRIRA in 1996, southern Arizona became the busiest crossing point along the US-Mexico border. Under the Obama administration, Arizona’s federal courts led the country in criminal prosecutions, with immigration accounting for 85 percent of the caseload in 2010. By 2011, reentry after deportation had become the leading charge sending people to prison, at 47 percent of all criminal prosecutions (Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse 2011; Light, Lopez, and Gonzales-Barrera 2014). The US Border Patrol was the lead agency referring a majority of all cases to the US Attorney’s Office (USAO) for criminal prosecution (Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse 2010).
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