Op-ed: Prison First, Deportation Later: Trump Revives Criminal Penalties for Border Jumpers

DEL RIO, Texas – Nine illegal aliens from Central America, Mexico, including one from Poland, filed together into a federal courtroom in this border town one recent April day to face an unpleasant new kind of consequence for the common crime they all committed.

Individually, each one illegally crossed the southern border into U.S. Border Patrol’s Del Rio Sector in February and March and happened to get caught at just the wrong time in presidential history. Just a few months earlier, under president Joe Biden, Border Patrol was under orders to reward millions who committed the federal crime of illegal entry by stamping them through a turnstile into interior America on their own recognizance. Donald Trump, however, issued new orders when he replaced Biden, to detain and deport them all. These nine tried their luck and lost.

Now they stand shoulder-to-shoulder for a collective federal court sentencing, interpretation devices plugged into ears, wearing orange jail jumpsuits and rattling wrist cuffs connected to leg iron chains.

Represented by seven criminal defense attorneys, with U.S. Marshals on hand to deter trouble, each of the nine pled guilty to a single misdemeanor charge of improper entry before U.S. Magistrate Judge Matthew H. Watters and awaited sentencing.

With little variation, each stepped before Judge Watters one by one and repeated what the first defendant told the judge, heads usually bowed in apparent contrition:

“I apologize for illegally entering the United States. I promise I will not be back.”

Judge Watters meted out nine jail sentences ranging from a low of 30 days to a high of 105 days, applying credit for time already served. Before the group was led back out to a waiting transport bus, Judge Watters issued a stern warning that encapsulates the higher purpose of not just this proceeding but of a growing number just like it across the nation’s federal courts. “There will be much more significant consequences if you return,” Judge Watters warned.

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[Read the rest at The Daily Wire]