According to a Daily Wire analysis of recently released data, President Joe Biden has largely gave up on prosecuting illegals for crossing the border. During his presidency, there have been fewer serious immigration offense prosecutions than any previous year under either the Trump or Obama administrations.
Under Biden, the prosecutions have all but stopped. The Department of Justice filed 84,000 misdemeanor charges against individuals for unauthorized entry in 2018. The Department of Justice charged 11,000 people with this misdemeanor in total over the three-year period from 2021 to 2023, which is just 4% of the previous rate, according to a Daily Wire study of Department of Justice statistics.
Illegal immigrants commit the crime of reentering the nation after deportation. In 2019, the DOJ charged 27,000 individuals with the offense. By 2023, there were 14,000, or around half that amount. This makes the decline all the more remarkable, especially in light of the sharp rise in unauthorized crossings.
In particular, in more severe cases, like those in which the defendant has already been deported, the apparent decision to rely on, at most, civil deportation proceedings rather than file criminal charges contradicts Biden’s assertion that additional authority from Congress is required to secure the border.
Because of the coronavirus outbreak, criminal prosecutions against illegal immigrants almost stopped in April 2020, when courts closed. By April 2020, there were only 671 and 960 illegals charged with entrance and criminal reentry, down from 4,000 and 2,000 in March 2020. During the coronavirus lockdown period of the remainder of 2020, there were only 13 criminal cases for unlawful entrance in December, almost nonexistent, while felony charges for illegal reentry were half of what they had been previously.
Following Joe Biden’s inauguration in January 2021, the coronavirus outbreak subsided. But the criminal application of immigration rules never made a comeback.
December 2023, the most recent month for which data is available, had 708 charges of unlawful entry and 1,236 charges of criminal reentry. In contrast, those figures were around 7,000 and 2,000, respectively, in December 2018.
June 2018, with 2,237 and 9,500, was the pinnacle of criminal enforcement during the Trump administration. The administration claimed that the decline in border apprehensions demonstrated the effectiveness of its deterrence measures. In contrast, the present record-low prosecution of unauthorized border crossings coincides with an all-time surge in crossings.
This is not only an expected distinction between Democratic and Republican governments. Biden, as vice president under Democratic President Barack Obama, has instead taken a more liberal stance toward illegal immigrants.
Last month, the Executive Office of US Attorneys issued yearly statistics that allow tracking over a longer period of time, although full data is only available for 2019. This data, which excludes the majority of minor illegal-entry charges, reveals cases that the Department of Justice prosecuted after receiving a referral from the Department of Homeland Security. The data indicates that during the Biden administration, there were fewer charges of major immigration offenses brought against illegal immigrants in each year than there have been since at least 2009.
Requests for comments received no response from the Department of Justice or the Department of Homeland Security.
With 37,000 significant cases submitted by DHS, the Obama administration filed nearly twice as many as Biden did in 2011. However, he reduced that figure annually after winning reelection to a second term, reaching 27,000 in 2016.
According to DOJ data covering major immigration offenses, it took the Trump administration a few years to return to the levels of Obama’s first term, hitting 36,607 instances in 2019 but never really surpassing Obama’s high.
However, misdemeanor charges for first-time unauthorized entry “smashed records.” The criminal charge is far more widespread, even if it is less serious.
“Misdemeanor unauthorized entrance was the charge against almost 68,400 offenders in FY 2018.” This is an approximately 86 percent increase from the previous year and the largest number of such offenders charged since EOUSA began tracking this category. In a news statement from 2018, the Trump administration stated, “This figure is also more than 4 percent more than the previous record of nearly 65,500 defendants established in FY 2013.”
The Biden administration has chosen to treat crossing the border illegally like a “traffic ticket,” which has led to word getting out in Latin America that there is little reason not to try to come to the United States. Currently serving as general counsel for America First Legal, under the leadership of Trump immigration czar Stephen Miller, Gene Hamilton served in the DOJ during the Trump administration.
Hamilton stated, “You should be seeing all-time records for prosecutions for crossing the border unlawfully, but you are not, given the volume of illegal aliens crossing the border.” They have eliminated a barrier. Whether or not someone enters the nation, gets freed, calls home, and tells their family is what matters most to them. People come in smaller numbers if they are aware that they may face criminal charges. This serves as a deterrent.
Immigration-related discourse has been focused on the volume of civil deportation cases that have accumulated into a record backlog under the Biden administration rather than the criminal statistics. However, unlawful entrance, readmission, migrant smuggling, and immigration fraud can all result in criminal charges and the possibility of punishment rather than just sending them away.
While the Trump administration prioritized prosecuting first-time misdemeanor border crossers in an effort to create a deterrent, Biden has deviated from past practice by hardly ever going after recidivist criminals who have proven that a soft approach is ineffective.
The United States Sentencing Commission stated in a study on fiscal year 2022 statistics that there has been a 34% decline in unauthorized reentry convictions since 2018. According to the report, the average age of illegal reentry offenders was 39 years old, and 97.6% of them were men with a history of prior criminal activity. It stated that 99.3% of prisoners receive jail sentences, which last an average of 13 months.
