States Strike Back as Biden’s Border Chaos Drags On; DOJ Report Details Decline in Border Prosecutions Under Biden: Takeaways From the ‘Prosecuting Immigration Crimes Report’, and the ‘why’ of Biden Nonenforcement

By admin On May 8, 2024

States strike back as Biden’s border chaos drags on

The Oklahoma House of Representatives approved a bill last week that would give police the power to arrest illegal immigrants for “impermissible occupation,” becoming the latest state to try to plug gaps President Biden has opened in the country’s border defenses.

The legislation, which still needs approval of the Senate and governor, would slap a misdemeanor charge on anyone who entered the U.S. without permission of federal authorities and then made their way to Oklahoma. Repeat offenders could earn a felony charge.

“The failure of the federal government to address this issue, and the lack of leadership by the Biden administration, has turned every state into a border state,” House Speaker Charles McCall, a Republican, said after shepherding the legislation through his chamber.

In Iowa, Gov. Kim Reynolds signed a similar law earlier this month, doling out misdemeanor charges to migrants who have already been denied admission, previously deported, or are defying a deportation order. Migrants with certain criminal records can face felony charges.

She too said the feds have abandoned the field, forcing her state to step up.

In Missouri, Attorney General Andrew Bailey fired off a letter last week to the mayor of Kansas City telling him that his sanctuary city-style comments declaring his city welcoming to migrants could trigger the state’s law making it a felony to knowingly transport an illegal immigrant.

“Your statements are wildly irresponsible,” Mr. Bailey wrote to Mayor Quinton Lucas.

The states are following the lead of Texas, where the state enacted a law carrying misdemeanor and felony penalties for a migrant who enters the state without having been admitted to the country by federal authorities.

Three years into the Biden administration, GOP-led states continue to be the chief opponents of Mr. Biden’s immigration policies, rushing to stiffen interior enforcement and plug gaps at the border.

Andrew “Art” Arthur, a former immigration judge who is now with the Center for Immigration Studies, said Congress has failed to prod the administration, leaving few other actors on the stage other than the states, who have good reason to take action. —>READ MORE HERE

DOJ Report Details Decline in Border Prosecutions Under Biden:

Takeaways from the ‘Prosecuting Immigration Crimes Report’, and the ‘why’ of Biden nonenforcement

o reduce illegal entries, DHS must deter migrants from coming illegally, and the two best deterrents Congress has given the department to deter illegal entrants (aside from removal) are detention — which is mandated for all arriving aliens encountered at the borders and ports — and prosecution under section 275 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) for “improper entry”. The main reason for the migrant surge that commenced shortly after President Biden took office is his refusal to comply with Congress’ detention mandate, as a federal judge held last March, but now DOJ’s “Prosecuting Immigration Crimes Report” (PICR) details the extent to which migrant prosecutions have declined in the past five years, as well.

PICR. In its latest iterations, the PICR is little more than a compilation of data prepared by DOJ’s Office of United States Attorneys, showing the number of aliens who have been prosecuted for various immigration-related offenses by court and nationality.

That’s a shame, because the August 2019 version of the PICR was a robust narrative that not only fleshed out the raw data and put it into context, but also offered examples of some of the most serious offenders implicated in immigration crimes.

For example, there was this, out of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida:

Ramon Lopez-Alvarado, an undocumented alien from Mexico, was sentenced to 14 years in prison for illegal reentry into the United States and failure to register as a sex offender under the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA). Lopez-Alvarado pled guilty to failing to register as a sex offender and a jury found him guilty of illegal reentry. Lopez-Alvarado had previously been removed from the United States on three occasions after being convicted of committing lewd acts on a child and failing to register as a sex offender. When Lopez-Alvarado illegally returned to the United States, he again failed to register as required by SORNA. [Emphasis added.]

Or this, from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia:

Luis Bonilla-Hernandez, of El Salvador who was illegally in the United States, was sentenced to over two years in prison for running an illegal commercial sex business that catered to the Hispanic community in Northern Virginia. For over three years, Bonilla-Hernandez and co-conspirator, Eliazar Duran Mota, ran the illegal business out of their homes in Sterling and Herndon. … Each week, Bonilla-Hernandez and Duran Mota would obtain a woman to work for a week at a time. … After a woman worked for a week, Bonilla Hernandez and Duran Mota would switch out their “inventory” by obtaining a new woman from Union Station to work throughout Northern Virginia. [Emphasis added.]

In any event, the August 2019 PICR reveals that in every month in FY 2018 and FY 2019, thousands of aliens were charged with improper entry and related offenses, including marriage fraud, a felony under section 275(c) of the INA.

For example, in the month of January 2019 alone, 8,593 defendants were charged with misdemeanor illegal entry under section 275 before federal magistrates, and charges against an additional 1,740 more serious offenders were filed in various federal district courts.