DOJ Switched Focus to Terrorism and Immigration Crimes
The Bush administration’s Justice Department has reallocated its resources, focusing less on mobsters and some white-collar crimes and more on terrorism, weapons offenses and immigration violations.
Justice Department prosecutions in terrorism and national security cases increased a whopping 876 percent, reaching a peak of 818 in 2003, the Washington Post reports. Prosecutions are up 87 percent in weapons cases and 36 percent in immigration cases.
Last year the department charged more than 19,000 defendants with immigration violations, according to the newspaper. The number prosecuted was second only to the number of drug-crimes defendants.
At the same time, the number of defendants prosecuted dropped 46 percent for bankruptcy fraud, 38 percent for organized crime, 25 percent for drug-related money-laundering, and 18 percent for bank robbery.
“The result is a department far less focused on the mob bosses, drug kingpins and bank robbers who have dominated much of its history, even as new FBI studies show a substantial rise in murders and other violent crimes over the past two years,” the Post says. “Perhaps most strikingly, the department’s statistics show that Justice is now in large part an immigration enforcement agency.”
