Monday, July 28, 2014

‘The border is closed’

Judge Robert Brack’s courtroom – a cavernous hall with high ceilings, an elevated dais and rows of dark wood pews – marks the last stop for hundreds of migrants each month before they are sent home as felons. They come through his court at a rate of about a dozen per day, chained at the waist and wrists. He preaches a gentle sermon to each before he issues their sentence. He calls their intention to seek work in the United States “noble,” their motivation “admirable,” but he warns them again and again that “the border is closed.” But is it true? Illegal immigration at the Southwest border has always been cyclical, tied to the ups and downs of the U.S. economy and marked by shifting patterns in which one entry point grows hot while others cool. While South Texas struggles with a flood of Central American migrants – many of them women and children who give themselves up to authorities, a pattern different from earlier waves of migrants who tried to evade capture – a “high consequences” approach to border enforcement over the past decade raising the stakes for would-be migrants has helped push illegal immigration to 40-year lows elsewhere on the Southwest border. One of those consequences is felony prosecutions of undocumented immigrants caught trying to illegally enter the country more than once: In southern New Mexico, federal felony prosecutions of undocumented immigrants have climbed sharply, up 40 percent over two years through May, according to Brack. That trend has emerged even as the number of migrants apprehended in the Border Patrol’s El Paso sector, which includes New Mexico, fell dramatically for seven years straight and then plateaued over the past two years. Illegal immigration has fallen off similarly in Arizona and California, as well. Over time, fewer people are crossing illegally but a higher percentage of those who are caught are being slammed with a felony charge, jail time and deportation. Apprehensions of undocumented migrants in the Border Patrol’s El Paso sector, which includes New Mexico, totaled 8,656 in the first nine months of the fiscal year. That compares with just over 11,000 apprehensions in all of fiscal 2013. Both years pale in comparison to the peak of more than 122,000 migrants apprehended in the sector in 2005...more

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