U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics ILLE
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/iofcjs00.htm
U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics
Immigration Offenders in the Federal Criminal Justice System, 2000
Describes the number of immigration offenders prosecuted in the Federal court between 1985 and 2000. The report examines the impact of the enactment of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Responsibility Act of 1986 on prosecutions. This act authorized increases in INS law enforcement activities and personnel and required longer sentences for immigration offenders with serious criminal histories. The report includes the number of persons evaluated for prosecution by the U.S. Attorneys, the nationality of persons investigated, characteristics and criminal histories of defendants, trends in prosecutions of immigration offenders, defendants adjudicated, and immigration offenders under correctional supervision. The data in the report are from the BJS Federal Justice Statistics Program.
Highlights include the following:
* The number of defendants prosecuted for an immigration offense rose from 6,605 in 1996 to 15,613 in 2000.
* Average time to be served by immigration offenders entering Federal prison increased from about 4 months in 1986 to 21 months in 2000.
* 57% of suspected immigration offenders were Mexican citizens; 7%, U.S. citizens; 3%, Chinese; and 28%, all other nationalities.
08/02 NCJ 191745
IMMIGRATION LAW PROSECUTIONS DOUBLE DURING 1996-2000
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/press/iofc00pr.htm
ADVANCE FOR RELEASE AT 4:30 P.M. EDT BJS
TUESDAY, AUGUST 6, 2002 202/307-0784
IMMIGRATION LAW PROSECUTIONS DOUBLE DURING 1996-2000
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The number of people prosecuted for immigration offenses in federal courts more than doubled from 1996 through the year 2000, growing from 6,605 defendants in 1996 to 15,613 defendants in 2000, the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) announced today.
In 1996 a new law authorized increases in U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) hiring, which resulted in the number of INS law enforcement officers growing from 12,403 to 17,654. Two-thirds of the increase were Border Patrol agents. Approximately 75 percent of the increase in referrals to U.S. attorneys for immigration offenses between 1996 and 2000 occurred in the five states (Texas, California, Arizona, New York and Florida) that received the greatest number of new INS officers.
The number of immigration offenders serving federal prison sentences increased almost ninefold between 1985 and 2000– from 1,593 to 13,676 adult men and womenâ€â€