US eyes more prosecutions

States to tow narrow line

SAN DIEGO, April 15, (AP): Through Republican and Democratic presidential administrations, the top federal prosecutor on California’s border with Mexico has resisted going after people caught entering the US illegally on their first try and instead targeted smugglers and serial offenders.

That approach may face a day of reckoning under President Donald Trump.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ new directive on border crimes suggests prosecutors in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas will be forced to tow a narrow line.

He says each should consider felony prosecution for anyone convicted twice of entering illegally and develop plans to target first-time offenders and charge them with misdemeanors that could send them to jail for up to six months.

The president and attorney general typically set broad priorities for the Justice Department’s 94 appointed US attorneys and give them significant leeway. Prosecutors in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona have taken a stance closer to what Sessions wants.

Not so in California’s Southern District covering about 140 miles (225 kms) of border from San Diego to Yuma, Arizona.

Entry

The federal government prosecuted 639 cases of illegal entry in California in the 2016 fiscal year, compared to 19,037 in the Southern District of Texas and 14,567 in the Western District of Texas, according to Syracuse University’s Transaction Records Access Clearinghouse. South Texas is the busiest corridor for illegal crossings but that alone doesn’t account for the huge disparity.

the work of MS-13,” Suffolk County police Commissioner Timothy Sini said Friday in announcing the identities of the victims.

He cautioned, however, that detectives were still pursuing leads.

A day earlier Sini said the tactics employed in the killings — using sharp instruments and extreme violence — were consistent with the gang, which has been gaining a foothold on Long Island for years.

He identified the four people found Wednesday as Jefferson Villalobos, 18, of Pompano, Florida; Michael Lopez Banegas, 20, of Brentwood; Jorge Tigre, 18, of Bellport; and Justin Llivicura, 16, of East Patchogue. Newsday reported that relatives said Villalobos was visiting his cousin, Banegas, and other family members. (AP)

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Peter Nunez, the top federal prosecutor in the district from 1982 to 1985 who believes the change is long overdue, said Trump is the first president since Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s to make immigration enforcement a top priority and US attorneys “will not be able to ignore that.”

Immigration cases already make up about half of arrests in federal courts and more along the 2,000mile border with Mexico. Any increase is likely to meet resistance from some judges and prosecutors in California.

James Stiven, a retired federal judge in San Diego, told the US Sentencing Commission last year that the California border district chose its cases carefully, “preserving resources throughout the federal criminal-justice system rather than squandering them on unproven ‘zero-tolerance’ approaches.” Of the proposed shift announced by Sessions on Tuesday, he said, “I can’t imagine it would be well-received by the judges.”

Carol Lam, who was named US attorney for the Southern District of California in 2002 by President George W. Bush and forced to resign nearly five years later, prosecuted fewer immigrant smuggling cases and turned limited resources on “the most dangerous offenders,” according to a report by the US Justice Department’s internal watchdog on the bungled dismissals of Lam and eight other US attorneys.

The Justice Department’s inspector general concluded Lam’s low immigration and firearms caseloads led to her firing. Some Republican members of Congress and at least one Democrat, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, questioned Lam’s record on immigration.

$10,000 in compensation to give up seats on overbooked flights, hoping to avoid an uproar like the one that erupted at United after a passenger was dragged off a jet.

United is taking steps too. It will require employees seeking a seat on a plane to book it at least an hour before departure, a policy that might have prevented last

Bentley

Resign

Dao

But her successor, Karen Hewitt, took a similar approach to immigration from 2007 to 2010. By the time Hewitt left, most border districts had embraced zero-tolerance policies. There were 70 crossers shackled together at the ankles each day for lightning-quick appearances at the federal courthouse in Tucson, Arizona, and 80 a day in tiny Del Rio, Texas.

First-time offenders generally spent less than a week behind bars but their misdemeanor convictions exposed them to felonies if caught again.

Focused

Hewitt focused on smugglers and generally avoided prosecutions of first-time crossers. She told Joanna Lydgate for a 2010 article in the California Law Review that her approach was “consistent with what the public (in the Southern District of California) would like to see.”

Laura Duffy, Hewitt’s successor, hewed to the same strategy until she resigned in December to become a state judge. US attorneys often change under new administrations, and Trump is expected to name permanent replacements soon.

Illegal entry prosecutions have plummeted in Arizona and New Mexico in recent years, so those districts may also be in for big changes.

Paul Charlton, the top federal prosecutor in Arizona from 2001 to 2007, said prosecutions require more judges, attorneys and prison beds. He questioned whether it’s worthwhile to pursue lower-level immigration offenses with limited resources.

“Your rhetoric has to match your pocketbook if you want to go through this the right way, and even then, you have to realize that the deterrent effect (of prosecutions) will only go so far.”

Sunday’s confrontation.

Those and other changes show airlines are scrambling to respond to a publicrelations nightmare — the video showing airport officers violently yanking and dragging 69-year-old David Dao from his seat on a sold-out United Express flight.

Dao and three others were ordered off the plane after four airline employees showed up at the last minute and demanded seats so they could be in place to operate a flight the next day in Louisville, Kentucky.

On Friday, a United spokeswoman said the airline changed its policy to require traveling employees to book a flight at least 60 minutes before departure. Had the rule been in place last Sunday, United Express Flight 3411 still would have been overbooked by four seats, but United employees could have dealt with the situation in the gate area instead of on the plane. (AP)