'Genuinely impressive': Prosecutions for immigration-related crimes tops record

AP Photo/Daniel Ochoa de Olza, File

Justice Department's charging surge in defiance of Democrats' push for open borders

Dewayne Nobles was arrested after Border Patrol agents found 11 illegal immigrants sitting on the attic rafters above his bedroom in his stepfather’s house in Texas.

Malik Jackson, nabbed at a highway checkpoint in California, told agents he was recruited by a high school buddy over Snapchat and was offered $300 to drive Mexican illegal immigrants and $600 to drive Chinese.

Luis Morales-Melendez stands accused of refusing to help as one of the group of illegal immigrants he was leading across the Rio Grande began to struggle and eventually drowned in the river’s swirling waters.

Jaime Chavez-Guevara was turned over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement by the crew of a container ship who said they found him stowed away on a run from Panama to Savannah, Georgia. It was the third time he was caught sneaking into the U.S., and he is facing a sentence of up to 15 years in prison.

They are among the more than 100,000 prosecutions for immigration-related border crimes the Justice Department has brought in the past 12 months, setting an all-time record.

The surge is a defiance of Democratic presidential candidates, who have pushed the idea that illegally crossing the border — known in the criminal code as improper entry, a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months of jail time — should not be a crime

The prosecutions still make up a small fraction of the total number of people jumping the border: more than 800,000 in fiscal year 2019.

But analysts said the increase shows the Trump administration’s priorities.

“These numbers are genuinely impressive,” said Jessica Vaughan, policy studies director at the Center for Immigration Studies. “They are not just a result of more cases to prosecute — there have always been more than enough cases, too many, to prosecute. The numbers reflect the decision to make this a real priority, not just a token effort.”

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