The Trump administration is increasingly throwing criminal charges at illegal immigrants, bringing the full weight of consequences on those who defy the law.
At the border, the rate of prosecutions for illegally entering the U.S., a misdemeanor, is up 4,500% from a year ago under President Biden.
Felony cases against illegal immigrants who sneak back into the U.S. after they are deported are up 140% over last year.
In the Los Angeles area, which has a large population of illegal immigrants, federal prosecutors under Mr. Biden would go entire months without bringing a single illegal reentry case. Under President Trump, they are averaging three dozen cases weekly.
Bill Essayli, the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, said those prosecutions increased by 3,755%.
“We do not want criminals coming back to the United States of America,” Mr. Essayli told The Washington Times. “We want good immigrants. We want law-abiding immigrants. These are not those people.”
Illegal immigration is a tricky area of law. It’s treated mostly as a civil offense. The penalty for being in the country without authorization is to be deported, but jumping the border without permission is a misdemeanor and sneaking back across the border after being deported is a felony.
In the past, those charges have been used only sporadically. Under Mr. Biden, they plunged.
Out of roughly 140,000 illegal immigrants apprehended by Border Patrol agents in March 2024, just 911 were charged with illegal entry, or about 7 per 1,000 cases.
This past March, the latest data available, agents recorded roughly 8,200 arrests. Prosecutors brought 2,604 cases, or a rate of about 318 per 1,000 cases, a 4,500% increase.
Illegal reentry cases, meanwhile, have shot up from 1,246 in March 2024 to 2,998 in March 2025, a 140% increase.
Jonathan Fahey, a former federal prosecutor in Virginia who served as acting head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the end of the first Trump administration, said the lack of prosecutions under Mr. Biden is another symptom of an “open borders” policy.
“They didn’t want to prosecute these cases even with the most serious offenders,” Mr. Fahey said. “They wanted illegal immigration, and they would do anything they could to encourage it.”
Immigration rights activists called the reversal worrying.
“Those numbers reflect this administration’s efforts to criminalize immigration,” said Emma Winger, deputy legal director at the American Immigration Council. “They are using these laws as a weapon to target people seeking safety in this country. Putting so many resources towards immigration-related offenses, including many misdemeanor charges, means that federal law enforcement can’t focus on true public safety threats.”
Making immigration cases is usually easy.
At the border, a migrant’s entry between ports of entry is proof enough for an illegal entry charge, known as a 1325 prosecution because of the section of law that governs it.
In the interior, illegal reentry cases, known as 1326 prosecutions, require only a search through an immigration file to find the records of a prior deportation. A migrant’s presence in the U.S. is proof that they came back without permission.
Mr. Fahey said the cases are particularly effective against illegal immigrants found in prisons and jails after previous deportations, allowing prosecutors to seek extra jail time based on the immigration charge or, sometimes, agree to a time-served plea deal in exchange for the migrant agreeing to drop all objections and accept speedy deportation.
“They’re not only easy to make, but they’re really an effective way to get the most serious offenders not only off the streets but deported,” Mr. Fahey said.
Experts said the growing numbers start at the top. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem urges agents and officers to recommend the cases, and Attorney General Pam Bondi is looking to her prosecutors to file them.
The U.S. attorneys running the country’s 94 federal districts now compete for bragging rights.
In northern Texas, prosecutors celebrated the conviction of an illegal immigrant who reentered the country and had a previous child sex assault conviction. In southern Texas, the U.S. attorney touted the conviction of an illegal immigrant who sneaked back into the U.S. eight times.
In Massachusetts, prosecutors hailed the guilty plea of a repeat illegal immigrant who was selling counterfeit Social Security cards and green cards. In Nevada, the U.S. attorney boasted of prison time for a Mexican found guilty of illegal reentry after four previous deportations.
Nowhere has the change been more stark than in Los Angeles.
At one point under Mr. Biden, the office stopped bringing cases, made a sweep through its files and dismissed dozens of open illegal reentry cases on the books.
“The prior U.S. attorney, whether that came from above or himself, I don’t know, was very adamant that 1,326 cases should not be filed in this office,” he told The Times. “What’s really concerning about this is how many crimes could have been prevented, how many individuals could have been removed, if we’d been enforcing these laws.”
Oddly, some in the Biden administration, including Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, thought they should bring more criminal cases, particularly illegal reentry prosecutions.
“I see cases now where we apprehend and remove individuals that I think need to be prosecuted criminally,” Mr. Mayorkas told U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and officers in early 2021, soon after he took office.
“Quite frankly, I’m going to have to understand why some of these individuals are not subject to a Title 8 USC 1326 case, and I intend to work with the [Justice Department] in that regard,” he said.
The administration is harnessing new tools, such as reviving a long-dormant registration requirement for illegal immigrants and charging them with crimes if they don’t check in.
Criminal investigators and prosecutors are about to get even more help.
The Department of Homeland Security has struck an agreement with the IRS to gain access to tax records for hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants.
This month, a judge rebuffed a lawsuit seeking to block information sharing. The judge said the investigations were allowed under the law as long as they were to pursue criminal charges.
The one area with a drop is migrant smuggling charges, which ticked down about 3% in March. That was a reflection of Mr. Trump’s success in sealing the border. Fewer people coming across the border means fewer smuggling attempts.
However, as a percentage, Mr. Trump’s team is still well ahead, with smuggling cases brought at a pace of nearly 5% of all illegal entries in March. The rate in March 2024 was less than 0.5%.
