Today's BJS report is definitely interesting. Despite the inflammatory headline from the press release, the data actually shows that when you exclude immigration arrests, there are actually FEWER arrests of non-citizens than in previous years.
Here's data from Table 2:
Of course, the data looks VERY different when you start counting immigration-related crimes like improper entry or illegal reentry. Under the Trump administration, prosecutions for these crimes have surged—making federal arrest numbers go way up.
Here's data from Table 2 again.
The report also shows that certain kinds of federal arrests are weighted towards U.S. citizens, while others are weighted towards non-citizens.
Federal immigration-related arrests? Overwhelmingly non-citizens.
Federal weapons arrests? Overwhelmingly U.S. citizens.
In many ways this report seem to fit squarely with what people like @AlexNowrasteh have been saying for years; when you exclude crimes which are incidental to immigration and the border, non-citizens already inside the U.S. are no more likely to commit crimes than citizens.
@AlexNowrasteh Another interesting tidbit? Table 11 breaks out immigration-related arrests across the 9 SW Border Sectors, and matches it with CBP data—showing that prosecutions bear little relationship to apprehensions.
Apprehensions going up =/= prosecutions going up, and vice versa.
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While in theory it might be true that judges have more expertise in interpreting statutes than agencies, in practice (especially in very technical fields) this is often wrong.
I say that as someone who has watched many recent judges butcher the INA and botch the total basics.
It’s not like the agencies get it right all the time either (they often don’t), but there are many judges who are simply bad at understanding technical fields where the precedent is weird, old, and often oddly contradictory due to generations of agglomerated statutory fiddling.
Yeah, this is a large part of it too; there is a feedback loop between agencies and Congress that involves collaboration and mutual understanding.
There is no feedback loop between agencies and judges other than the process of briefing and argumentation.
I cannot express enough how much the entire basis of the administrative state has just been thrown into the air. This is a huge power grab by the judicial branch, which will now exercise a level of control over the executive branch that is utterly unprecedented in the modern era.
Crucially, the impact of the death of Chevron on immigration is... mixed. Deportation is a purely administrative law regime, and so ending judicial deference to the administrative state will actually help immigrants in some circumstances. But we won't know the impact for years.
The Board of Immigration Appeals, which until now has enjoyed Chevron deference, is going to lose substantial power as a result of this, and immigrants should fare better when challenging erroneous deportations. But immigration regulations will be more vulnerable than ever.
Here's the QUICKEST path to citizenship for beneficiaries of this program.
- I-130 + I-485, wait an average 11.2 months
- Wait 2.75 years
- File I-751, wait an average 25.3 months
- File N-400, wait an average 5.2 months
That's 6.2 years, presuming zero other delays (unlikely).
So, given best case scenarios of zero additional delays, a person granted parole in place under the new Biden admin program MIGHT be able to become a US citizen sometime in late 2030. But if there's any delays at all, that date could easily be pushed back to 2031 or later.
This tweet gives the false impression that the Biden admin is creating a new path to permanent status. This population is ALREADY eligible for a green card. What Biden's doing is helping eliminate a barrier which stops them from being able to take advantage of that eligibility.
Totally agree it’s a big deal! But it’s important to explain why, accurately. IMHO, it’s not that these people weren’t able to “get in line”—unlike for most people there actually IS a line. It’s just that getting in the line means risking a decade of separation. This fixes that.
Setting aside that there aren't 20 million undocumented immigrants (actual number is 12-15 million, depending on if you count new arrivals facing removal proceedings in the number), it's pretty dark to say the US should seize and redistribute millions of peoples' homes.
If you seriously think that this is a common thing that millions of undocumented immigrants are doing, I've got a bridge in Brooklyn I own that I'd be happy to sell you for a low, low price! Send your Venmo over now.
Living here without papers is not a crime. And you don't even need to trust me on that.
Here's Justice Anthony Kennedy, conservative, saying exactly that in 2012: "As a general rule, it is not a crime for a removable alien to remain present in the [US]."
I'm not commenting on the endorsement—but FYI this is completely ahistorical.
Legal immigration fell every single year under the Trump administration, and in his last 18 months he issued multiple bans that, if not blocked in court, would have cut legal immigration by easily 1/3.
The Trump administration was so anti-legal-immigration they adopted Kafkaesque policies like the "no blank spaces" policy, where if you didn't hand write "N/A" in every single box on a form (no matter how irrelevant) they'd reject it automatically. washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-t…
In October 2019, Trump banned all immigration from people who didn't have specific health insurance plans. If that hadn't been stopped in court, that would have caused the largest cut in immigration in generations.
And in 2020, he used COVID to ban nearly all immigration.