Aliens Convcited for Illegal Reentry — in Northern Ohio

Summary

O n June 12, the U.S. Attorney’s Office (USAO) for the Northern District of Ohio issued a press release: “ Six Illegal Aliens Sentenced, Four Others Indicted for Immigration Offenses ”. The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) is a veritable tool shed of authorities DHS (Dept. of Homeland Security) immigration officers and federal prosecutors can use to keep would-be illegal migrants from coming illegally, remove those here unlawfully, and (as importantly and much more cheaply) strongly encourage those here without authorization to leave. The problem is that most administrations in the past relied almost exclusively on the same suite of tools: arrest (under sections 236(a) and 287(a)(1) and (2) of the INA), detention (also section 236, plus sections 235(b)(1) and (b)(2)(A) of the INA), removal proceedings ( section 240 of the INA), and deportation ( section 241(a) of the INA). Treasury didn’t need the money), and even immigration experts were largely unaware of the registration requirements in sections 262 through 266 of the INA. Of course, Congress wrote the latter when The Wizard of Oz was a first-run feature at the local Odeon. To be fair, the two-year penalty there is the same one that could be imposed for serial illegal reentry under section 275(a) of the INA, but if you reenter after deportation for certain crimes (section 276(b)(1) of the INA), it jumps to 10 years, and if your last deportation was due to an aggravated felony, it’s a potential sentence of 20 years under section 276(b)(2). That’s good, because other aliens in the same situation in the Buckeye State should be made aware of the potential price of flouting the immigration laws. Quarterly, DOJ updates and publishes its “Prosecuting Immigration Crimes Report” ( PICR ), a collection of prosecutions various USAOs have filed for violations of sections 274 (alien smuggling and related crimes), 275, and 276 of the INA. Immigration-enforcement advocates are clamoring for a massive increase in street-level arrests of illegal migrants, which given the “the four-year invasion of illegal immigration” (in Blanche’s terms) that saw eight million-plus illegal migrants pour over a wildly insecure Southwest border, triggering “the insidious results” the then-DAG referred to, is a reasonable demand.