| | |  Editorials | Issues | April 2009 
Immigration Cases Fuel Rise in US Latino Federal Inmates
 Hiram Soto - Enlace
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The percentage of federal offenders who are Latino has risen dramatically in the past two decades, driven in part by an increase in illegal immigration and enforcement of immigration laws, according to a study released by the Pew Hispanic Center.
While the number of federal offenders in general doubled from 1991 to 2007, the number of Latinos who were sentenced for federal crimes accounted for more than 54 percent of the growth, the study says.
Latinos accounted for 40 percent of all federal offenders in 2007, up from 16 percent in 1991.
Immigration offenses accounted for nearly half of all federal convictions, followed by drug crimes at 37 percent, according to Pew, a national nonpartisan think tank.
The Immigration Policy Center, a pro-immigrant organization, responded to the report by questioning the resources that the federal government is dedicating to prosecuting lower-level immigration cases.
In San Diego, immigration lawyer Lilia Velasquez said changes to immigration laws in 1996 made it easier for the government to arrest and prosecute undocumented immigrants.
There have been more raids, more arrests and more prosecutions of people using someone else's Social Security number, and those are federal crimes, Velasquez said.
The increased number of federal offenders has led to overcrowding at immigration detention facilities and a larger workload for the justice system.
Sam Hamrick, clerk for the U.S. court district that includes San Diego County, said the local federal courts saw a 26 percent increase in the number of cases that required a Spanish-language interpreter in the past fiscal year. In that time, there were nearly 20,000 proceedings in which an interpreter was needed. |
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