To reduce illegal entries, DHS must deter migrants from coming illegally, and the two best deterrents Congress has given the department to deter illegal entrants 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 for "Improper entry".
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.
FY 2020 PICR. The narratives were gone by the time that the FY 2020 PICR was issued, and the number of aliens charged with misdemeanor illegal entry dropped, slightly at first and then precipitously.
Speaking of quicker options, more than 20,000 illegal migrants in FY 2020 were returned back across the border to await their asylum hearings under the Migrant Protection Protocols, better known as "Remain in Mexico".
FY 2022 PICR. Border Patrol agents apprehended more than 2.2 million illegal migrants at the Southwest border in FY 2022, and yet the PICR for that fiscal year reveals that just 3,172 of them -.
14 percent of the total - were subject to prosecution for illegal entry under section 275.
Last fiscal year, just 4,963 aliens faced prosecution before magistrates for misdemeanor illegal entry, and almost all of them were in Arizona.
Do the math, and you'll see that the prosecution rate for illegal entry at the Southwest border in FY 2023 was a mere.24 percent.
On the Northern border, agents nabbed 10,021 illegal migrants, and prosecuted 243 of them for illegal entry - a prosecution rate of 2.4 percent.
As the foregoing demonstrates, DOJ's own PIRC reveals that the Biden administration has failed to utilize a law that criminalizes illegal entry into the United States anywhere near as vigorously as its predecessor did, even while migration at the Southwest border has surged - essentially proving Abbott's point.
Simply put, because Biden's DHS presumes that every alien who crosses the border illegally is an "Asylum seeker", it refuses to punish the vast majority of them even though there's no "Asylum exception" in section 275 of the INA. Second, Border Patrol agents are so overwhelmed rounding up, transporting, processing, and releasing illegal entrants that they lack the resources to refer more than a handful of them for criminal prosecution.
https://cis.org/Arthur/DOJ-Report-Details-Decline-Border-Prosecutions-Under-Biden
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