Posted on 08/19/2010 9:33:38 AM PDT by SandRat
PHOENIX — Nearly one out of every five cases being brought by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the whole country are filed in Arizona, according to a report. The Transactional Research Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University found there were 20,818 prosecutions in the first eight months of the current fiscal year. That compares with 109,532 for the entire country.
Arizona represents just 2 percent of the national population.
More than four out of every five are related to immigration laws.
But even within that category, the study shows a clear trend.
Five years ago, federal prosecutors brought fewer than 3,200 immigration cases to the courts in the first eight months; the figures for the current fiscal year exceed 17,500.
And drug prosecutions also are up, too.
None of this impressed Gov. Jan Brewer.
“These efforts to arrest and prosecute are good, but they are not enough,’’ said gubernatorial press aide Paul Senseman. And she chose to look at the increase in prosecutions as a sign things are getting worse, not better.
But Dennis Burke, U.S. attorney for Arizona, said his predecessors — political appointees like he is, wanted to pursue more cases. What they lacked, Burke said, was the money to hire more lawyers to bring more cases to court.
“They just didn’t have the resources,’’ he said. The result, he said, was decisions were made to send people back home.
“Now you can go back and say, ‘Look, this person has a criminal background,’ ” Burke explained. “It’s not just a question of deporting him. This is a question of prosecuting him before he’s deported.’’
Fed. Courts and Border Ping
Ping!
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