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Obama's DOJ may refocus on prosecuting crime instead of immigration

I'll be pleased if the Obama Administration reverses recent trends at the Justice Department prioritizing prosecution of petty immigration crimes over more serious felonies, as predicted by members of his transition team. The New York Times' Solomon Moore lays out the issue in stark detail:Federal prosecutions of immigration crimes nearly doubled in the last fiscal year, reaching more than 70,000 immigration cases in the 2008 fiscal year, according to federal data compiled by a Syracuse University research group. The emphasis, many federal judges and prosecutors say, has siphoned resources from other crimes, eroded morale among federal lawyers and overloaded the federal court system. Many of those other crimes, including gun trafficking, organized crime and the increasingly violent drug trade, are now routinely referred to state and county officials, who say they often lack the finances or authority to prosecute them effectively...continue to full post

Full post as published by Grits for Breakfast on January 12, 2009 (boomark / email).