JURIST - Paper Chase: Criminal illegal immigrants may have high rate of reincarceration: DOJ

[JURIST] Illegal immigrants in the US who have been arrested and released within US borders appear to exhibit a markedly high rate of reincarceration, according to a report [text, PDF] released by the US Department of Justice [official website] on Monday. The report

...judgmentally selected a sample of 100 criminal histories, which we reviewed for evidence of arrests of criminal aliens subsequent to June 30, 2003. The criminal histories for 73 of the 100 individuals documented at least one arrest after that date. Those 73 individuals accounted for a total of 429 arrests, with 878 charges and 241 convictions. These figures represent an average of nearly six arrests per individual. The charges for the 73 individuals ranged from traffic violations and trespassing to more serious crimes, such as burglary or assault....[I]f this data is indicative of the full population of 262,105 criminal histories, the rate at which released criminal aliens are rearrested is extremely high.

The report also found that "most incarcerated aliens are being released into the U.S. at the conclusion of their respective sentences because [of a lack of] resources to identify, detain, and remove these aliens." AP has more.

A report [full text; AP report] issued by the Pew Hispanic Center last March estimated that there were as many as 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States, totaling about one in every 20 workers. In October, President Bush signed legislation authorizing a controversial 700-mile fence [JURIST news archive] along a portion of the southern border to help stem the unauthorized inflow.