Advocates: Feds using ‘illegal re-entry’ charge to up deportation numbers

BOSTON — The Trump administration is increasing its use of the federal charge of unlawful re-entry, leading to a noticeable uptick in such prosecutions at U.S. District Court Massachusetts. Immigration advocates in New England argue that the increased prosecutions are an attempt to gin up support for the president’s mass immigrant deportation campaign.

The felony charge of “unlawful re-entry of a deported alien” is defined as entering the country after a previous deportation without permission and outside an authorized port of entry. 

From October 2024 through January 2025, just four people in Massachusetts were charged with the felony in U.S. District Court.  But from February through June, there were 96 re-entry prosecutions in Massachusetts. 

“It’s clearly linked to what President Trump and the Attorney General have stated their prosecution priorities are,” said Jane Peachy, president of the Massachusetts Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. “They’re cracking down on immigration and that includes bringing criminal charges on people simply based on their re-entry.”

Those charged with felony illegal re-entry often have criminal records in the U.S. that date back to before their previous deportations. Advocates say that though those charges do not play a role in their re-entry cases, they do play into administration narratives to paint all immigrants as criminals.

“I think it’s a manner in which to have a criminal spin on immigration violations,” said Tania Martinez, president of the New England Chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

Martinez added that the increase appears indicative of deeper problems within the immigrant detention system. 

“At this juncture in this administration, we’re seeing a lot of clients who don’t want to stay in prolonged detention,” she said. The increased prosecutions, she says, are an example of the administration’s increased pressure on immigrants  “to prioritize getting out quickly.”

The Office of the United States Attorney in Massachusetts did not respond to four emails and two phone calls requesting comment for this story.

The history of unlawful re-entry

Those in favor of a stricter immigration policy say that the use of the illegal re-entry charge is an effective tool in deterring undocumented border crossings.

“There has to be some real deterrent to just turning around and coming across the border illegally,” said Ira Mehlman, media director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform. “This is certainly a tool [the federal government] can and should use. This is how you deter people from violating our laws.”

Unlawful re-entry was codified in the U.S. at the same time as its misdemeanor cousin, unlawful entry, as part of the Undesirable Aliens Act of 1929. Also known as Blease’s Law, after its segregationist sponsor, Sen. Coleman Livingston Blease, Democrat from South Carolina, it was enacted to resolve disagreements between nativists and representatives of industries reliant on Mexican migrant labor, such as agriculture. 

The law’s passage resulted in about 44,000 illegal entry prosecutions by the end of the 1930s, almost entirely targeting Mexicans.

“Illegal entry and re-entry came into the immigration statute on explicitly racist motives,” said Ragini Shah, a clinical professor of law at Suffolk University and faculty director of the Immigrant Justice Clinic. “There’s some pretty eugenicist language in the law.”

“Multiple sponsors of the law argued for its passage based on eugenicist ideas of Mexicans,” she continued. “They referred to Mexicans as mongrels, as beasts.”

The law was recognized as racist at the time. Debating the bill in 1929, U.S. Rep. John J. O’Connor, a Democrat from New York, directly attacked the motives behind it.

“There seems to be a spirit of bigotry and intolerance in America,” he said at the time, “directed at the races of the rest of the world that is surely un-American.”

Peachy said the law has continued to serve that purpose.

“It has a discriminatory effect and they’re not prosecuting people from other parts of the world,” she said. “That’s troubling when you have this highly discretionary charge and all the people you’re enforcing it against are from a certain part of the world and of a certain ethnicity.”

“The people being prosecuted on these are overwhelmingly from Central American countries,” Peachy said.

Data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection for fiscal 2024 showed over 2 million encounters at the southern border. The majority of those migrants came from Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Guatemala and Mexico.

According to a Pew Report, since 1965, over 18.4 million Mexicans have come to the U.S. The largest immigrant origin nations after that are China, at 4.5 million; India, at 4.4 million; and the Philippines, with 2.8 million.

In 2021, a U.S. District Court Nevada judge in the case of United States v. Carrillo-Lopez, accepted the argument that the law unjustly discriminated against Mexicans and thus violated the Constitution’s equal protection guarantee. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the decision two years later. 

Mehlman rejected the premise that the law was motivated by eugenicist thought. 

(The Federation for American Immigration Reform is listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center because it claims the Federation’s founder had ties to eugenicists, a charge Mehlman vehemently denies. Mehlman discredited the SPLC by pointing to its own reckoning with racism in 2019.)

“[The law is] not based on eugenics,” said Mehlman. “It is based on the flow of immigration. If you have large numbers of people from particular countries, you’re going to have large numbers of people prosecuted.” 

While that may be the case, said Peachy, there are many immigrants from other parts of the world who do not face the law or its consequences nearly as much as proportions would suggest. 

“The increase in these prosecutions, and the types of individuals they are targeting for felony criminal prosecution just based on their status in this country, is politically motivated,” Peachy said. “The fact that the law affects a disproportionate number of Hispanic people is a reason the [U.S. Attorney’s Office] should use it sparingly and only when they feel it meets their goals of public safety.”

Nationally, citizens of Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras faced an illegal re-entry charge most frequently between October 2024 and June 2025, with 16,222, 2,235, and 1,677 prosecutions respectively, totaling more than 91% of the defendants facing unlawful re-entry charges. 

Justice Department data shows the trends in Massachusetts bear this out. Of the 96 defendants prosecuted under the law in the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts between February (Trump’s first full month after returning to the presidency) and June, 32 were from Guatemala, 20 were from the Dominican Republic, 11 were from Brazil, eight were from Ecuador, eight were from Honduras, eight were from Mexico, seven were from El Salvador, and one each from Colombia and Jamaica. (A representative for the U.S. Attorney’s Office said a clerical error included a U.S. national prosecuted, though only non-citizens can be charged.)

Nationwide, illegal re-entry charges have increased under Trump, though not as dramatically as in Massachusetts. From February through June, federal prosecutors have charged an average of 2,754 defendants per month with illegal re-entry, compared to an average of 2,049 per month in October through December 2024.

“They shouldn’t be bringing charges in every case just because they can,” Peachy said.

Criminalizing people

Unlawful re-entry has long been a common charge in federal courts. According to data analyzed by Transactional Record Access Clearinghouse, the charge was the No. 1 immigration-related charge in federal courts in 2024, 2023, and 2020. Most of those charges are from courts in southern border states.

The Light is aware of four New Bedford residents swept up in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions in recent months who have pleaded guilty to illegal re-entry. They include three men from Guatemala and another from Mexico. 

“In federal court we consider this the low-hanging fruit in terms of prosecutions,” Peachy said. “It’s the type of case where there’s a lot of discretion on the part of the United States Attorney’s Office on whether or not to prosecute someone for this crime.”

Advocates said its increased use is a way of creating a narrative that fits the mass deportation agenda of the Trump administration.

“It is absolutely a way to go after someone who does not have other federal charges,” Shah said. “It’s a way to paint them as a criminal alien.”

Shah said the unlawful re-entry charge is formally independent of any prior convictions that led to a defendant’s first deportation and reliant exclusively on their return after deportation. But their rap sheets leading to their initial deportation may help the administration paint the picture that they’re only going after criminals.

“They may be trumpeting these charges because there is no clear connection between the prior convictions and the prior deportation order,” she said.

An analysis by the CATO Institute released in June found that of the almost 205,000 people booked into detention by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement nationwide between Oct. 1, 2024, and June 14 of this year, 65% had no criminal convictions, and 93% had no violent charges. 

Advocates who spoke with The Light said they worry that increased illegal re-entry charges may gum up the federal district courts’ ability to speedily prosecute other crimes.

“Under other administrations they’ve declined a lot of these types of cases because they feel their resources are better spent in other areas,” Peachy said. “Federal judges are busy. Federal prosecutors are busy. It’s just a strain on the system — especially in federal court, where there are way more important things to focus on.” 

Peachy noted that press releases about guilty pleas to illegal re-entry focus on the maximum penalties of 10 years in prison, three years supervised release, and a $250,000 fine. The reality, she said, is that most illegal re-entry defendants plead out to time served and a nominal fee and are deported afterward.

“They want the press release out there saying they’re going to prosecute someone to the 10-year maximum, and I think that’s a fiction,” Peachy said. 

There are some signs that the administration’s policies have reduced the number of immigrants in the U.S. A recent analysis released by Pew Research Center found that, as of June 2025, 51.9 million immigrants resided in the U.S., a drop from 53.3 million in January. But Pew acknowledged that the fear permeating immigrant communities may have contributed to a lower response rate to surveys.

Much of the motive for increased illegal re-entry prosecutions, Martinez surmised, is an attempt to induce fear in immigrant communities and pressure them in other ways.

“A lot of times, the people we see being detained are providing financially for their families,” Martinez said. “I think the administration has created this sense of fear in everyone that comes to the U.S. undocumented and is here undocumented.” 

She said it has also become a way to keep more immigrants from pursuing legal status in the U.S.

“It builds a wall for someone to be able to rectify their immigration status,” she said. “Behind each one of these stories is a personal story, but we’re not taking into consideration the ‘why’ behind it.”

Advocates also continue to point out the law’s roots.

“Illegal re-entry and illegal entry came into the immigration statute on an explicitly racist motive, and President Trump revels in the explicitly racist,” said Shah. “The fact that we still have these two crimes on the books is a problem.”

Kevin G. Andrade can be contacted at kandrade@newbedfordlight.org.

---

More stories by Kevin G. Andrade

ICYMI: The buzz at the Z’s ‘Reopening Day’

January 18, 2026January 18, 2026

Artists craft a new theater — and a new friendship

January 13, 2026January 13, 2026

Limits to birthright citizenship, tighter visa rules on the docket in 2026

January 11, 2026January 11, 2026