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MUSLIMS TARGED WITH FEDERAL CRIME

MUSLIMS TARGED WITH FEDERAL CRIME

Migrants from Muslim-majority countries are disproportionately charged and detained for an lesser known crime of failing to cross the border at a formal checkpoint and report to a customs office. The charge, created decades ago to fight drug trafficking, carries a maximum sentence of one year, double the length of the more well-known charge of illegal entry, which carries a top-end sentence of six months. Only a fraction of the hundreds of thousands of people who cross the southern border each year are prosecuted for any crime at all. Most are turned back to Mexico or their home countries or released into the U.S after claiming asylum. Although the U.S. prosecutes thousands of migrants annually for reentering the U.S. after being deported, prosecutions of first-time border crossers are less common. For an 18-month period beginning in October 2021, however, the U.S. attorney’s office in Del Rio, Texas, charged more than 200 migrants with violating a rarely used and all but forgotten law, 19 U.S. code 1459, which states that anyone crossing into the United States must cross at a checkpoint and report to a customs office. More than 60% of those charged under the failure to report law were from Muslim-majority countries, including Afghanistan, Syria, Iran and Mali. Citizens of Muslim-majority countries make up less than 5% — of the people who cross the southern border, according to government data. 

Due to President Trump’s Last In First out policy, the backlog of applicants is over 667,000, asylum seekers have waited many years for their interviews. Ting Law Group has filed mandamus lawsuit to get your case completed faster. The general experience has been receiving the interview within 2-3 months after filing the lawsuit. Are you tired of waiting? Call 720-740-4247.

If you want our immigration law firm to guide and take action for you, call us!

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