Immigrants who have a deportation order on their record and enter the United States again can be charged with what is called unlawful reentry, technically known as 8 USC 1326. This week, a judge in Nevada ruled that due to the racist anti-Latino history of this law (which is true), that it violates the equal protection clause of the Constitution (this part may not ultimately hold up in court).
We at TRAC study the federal government by obtaining large datasets through the Freedom of Information Act, and one part of that research includes analyzing federal prosecution data. Because unlawful reentry is a federal criminal charge, we have data on this charge going back years.
Out of curiosity — and to make the data available to the public — I pulled that data and made a simple graph showing the number of prosecutions for 8 USC 1326 over the past 20 years. That graph, shown below, provides some perspective on just how many prosecutions take place each year and therefore could be potentially impacted by this ruling, thought it may be a long shot.
