In January 2008, there were 4,739 federal prosecutions classified as immigration matters, according to timely enforcement data from the Justice Department. This is up over 20% from the previous month, and represents the largest monthly number of such prosecutions in the past seven years. There has been substantial growth in the number of cases handled by U.S. Magistrate Courts, and some portion of this increase may reflect improvements in the recording of these magistrate cases by the Justice Department.

The Ninth Circuit appears to be internally split on whether a charging document phrased in the conjunctive constitutes an admission of all the facts in the charge (i.e., a plea to a "permanent and temporary" taking necessary admits a permanent taking), or whether a plea to such language should be read in the disjunctive where the statute of conviction is disjunctive and the conjunctive charge is merely a device that allows the prosecution to prove either of the disjunctive options in the statute in order to convict (i.e., a plea to a "permanent and temporary" taking really means a plea to "per

Rosenberg, Benefit Of The Doubt: The Survival Of The Principle Of Narrow Construction And Its Current Applications, 8 BENDER'S IMMIGR. BULL. 1553 (2003).

It may be possible to argue that a foreign pardon, like a foreign expungement, should be effective to eliminate a first conviction of simple possession, and similar offense, in the Ninth Circuit where state rehabilitative relief works, since the Ninth Circuit held foreign rehabilitative relief effectively eliminates a conviction for all immigration purposes. Dillingham v. Ashcroft, 267 F.3d 996 (9th Cir. 2001).

Immigration Reduces Crime Rates
LiveScience.com Tue Mar 18, 4:11 PM ET
Contrary to popular stereotypes, areas undergoing immigration are associated with lower violence, not spiraling crime, according to a new study by Harvard University sociologist Robert Sampson, published in the American Sociological Association's Contexts magazine. He examined crime and
immigration in Chicago and around the United States to find the truth behind the popular perception that increasing immigration leads to crime.

Piedrahita v. Mukasey, 524 F.3d 142 (1st Cir. Apr. 28, 2008) (petition for review denied where petitioner failed to raise relevant issues in his opening brief, and addressed a dispositive issue in an incoherent and perfunctory manner).

Ortiz-Magana v. Mukasey, 523 F.3d 1042 (9th Cir. Apr. 28, 2008) (noncitizen failed to establish a reasonable probability that the state would apply the statute of conviction outside the definition of the ground of deportation in the aiding and abetting an assault with a deadly weapon, aggravated felony crime of violence context, since he presented no evidence that California has applied aiding and abetting assault outside the generic definition of a crime of violence).

United States v. Shi, 525 F.3d 709 (9th Cir. Apr. 28, 2008) (foreign national who forcibly seizes control of a foreign vessel in international waters may be subject to the jurisdiction of the U.S. when such vessel is intercepted by federal authorities).

United States v. Aguila-Montes de Oca, 523 F.3d 1071 (9th Cir. Apr.

United States v. Aguila-Montes de Oca, 523 F.3d 1071 (9th Cir. Apr. 28, 2008) ("In another recent en banc decision of our court, the defendant Vidal did not plead guilty "as charged." United States v. Vidal, 504 F.3d 1072, 1087 (9th Cir. 2007). As a result, our en banc court had "no way of knowing what conduct Vidal admitted when he pled guilty to conduct that was not identical to that charged in Count One of the Complaint." Id. at 1088.