[JURIST] The US Department of Justice (DOJ) [official website] only prosecuted about two percent of the individuals arrested on suspicion of illegally entering the country along the US-Mexico border during a five-year period, according to an Associated Press analysis of federal figures on arrests and prosecutions released Monday. The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University [official website] collected the relevant data and provided it to AP. The analysis further specified that about 98 percent of suspected illegal immigrants [JURIST news archive] who entered the United States between Oct. 1, 2000 and Sept. 30, 2005 never faced criminal charges, though the number of immigrants prosecuted annually reportedly tripled during that time. AP has more.

The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) [official website] maintains a number of initiatives [fact sheet] to combat illegal immigration [JURIST news archive].