Sessions tours border, touts new crackdown
NOGALES, Ariz. — Attorney General Jeff Sessions toured the U.S.Mexico border Tuesday and unveiled what he described as a new gettough approach to immigration prosecutions under President Trump.
The nation’s top law enforcement official outlined a series of changes that he said mark the start of a new era to rid American cities and the border of what he described as “filth” brought on by drug cartels and criminal organizations.
He announced the changes at a news conference following a morning tour of the border that included visiting a port of entry. He later visited with Customs and Border Protection officers and agents.
Sessions credited Trump for a steep dropoff of border apprehensions this year and said the administration will bring more felony prosecutions against immigrants entering the country illegally.
“This is a new era. This is the Trump era,” he said. “The lawlessness, the abdication of the duty to enforce our immigration laws, and the catch and release practices of old are over.”
He said all prosecutors would carefully protect the civil rights of people charged with crimes, and he defended Trump’s proposed border wall, saying it will be another tool to fight illegal immigration.
“The barrier, the wall, will have a great and positive impact and will continue our ability to follow through on a commitment to end the lawlessness,” Sessions said.
Sessions has been expanding the Justice Department’s role in the anti-immigration agenda of the Trump administration. But his speech Tuesday during his first visit to the border offered the most comprehensive look yet at his plans for federal prosecutions of those in the country illegally.
He directed the nation’s federal prosecutors in a Tuesday memo to prioritize immigrationrelated cases, with an eye toward targeting people who cross the border illegally and those who come back after being deported.
Sessions urged federal prosecutors to intensify their focus on immigration crimes such as illegal crossing or smuggling others into the U.S., even though such prosecutions are already happening on a large scale. Half of federal arrests in 2014 were for immigration-related offenses, according to a Pew Research analysis released this week, based on the most recent federal statistics.
Critics blasted the initiatives announced by Sessions as fear-mongering and anti-immigrant rhetoric not rooted in facts.
“Once again, Attorney General Sessions is scaring the public by linking immigrants to criminals despite studies showing that immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than the native born. He and President Trump are wasting more federal taxpayer dollars going after illegal border crossers instead of protecting the American public,” said Gregory Z. Chen, director of government relations for the American Immigration Lawyers Association.