Immigration Crackdown: More Hispanics go to federal prison

We have a "war on crime" and a "war on drugs." We also have a war on immigrants! The latest attack is called "Operation Streamline," which is the obtaining of simultaneous guilty pleas from groups of migrants caught crossing the border. This has resulted in Hispanics now comprising half of all people sentenced for felony crimes. (Re-entering the U.S. after having been deported once before is defined as a felony. The first crossing is defined as a misdemeanor.) 


For more on the U.S. government's penchant for making every problem into a "war" see our page: A Disastrous Metaphor: Waging Domestic War.

The Associated Press: AP Enterprise: More Hispanics go to federal prison: "Expedited court hearings along the border (called   "Operation Streamline" - which a Federal Appeals court recently upheld) are a major force driving a seismic demographic shift in who is being sent to federal prison. Statistics released this week revealed that Hispanics now comprise nearly half of all people sentenced for federal felony crimes, a number swollen by immigration offenses. In comparison, Hispanics last year made up 16 percent of the total U.S. population.

Sentences for felony immigration crimes, which include (repeated) illegal crossing as well as other crimes such as alien smuggling, accounted for about 87 percent of the increase in the number of Hispanics sent to prison over the past decade (AMB emphasis), according to an analysis of U.S. Sentencing Commission data.

Some of the expedited border court hearings are part of a program called Operation Streamline that began in 2005 in Del Rio, Texas, and soon spread to other Border Patrol sectors.

It is a departure from the old "catch and release" policy and aims to stem the flow of illegal immigrants from Mexico. Before 2005, illegal crossers were sporadically charged with federal misdemeanors, but many Mexican immigrants were often simply driven back across the border.

Operation Streamline and other fast-track programs speed illegal immigrants through accelerated legal proceedings, where most guilty pleas come in Spanish and thousands of Mexican citizens end up locked up each year for entering the country without papers.

The first time someone is caught entering the country illegally usually results in a misdemeanor that leads to deportation or a maximum of six months in federal custody. If they are caught again — as often happens — they are charged with a felony count called illegal re-entry that carries at most a two-year prison sentence or more if they have a criminal history. Some felony charges ultimately are reduced to misdemeanors through plea bargains."