Study: Consequences Cut Illegal Immigration

Prosecuting illegal immigrants, or banning them from obtaining a visa, substantially reduces their likelihood of attempting to cross the border a second time, a new study concludes.

Although it only discusses a policy rolled out between 2008 and 2012, the study may have major implications for President Donald Trump's zero tolerance approach to immigration enforcement, which still requires the prosecution of most childless border crossers.

The paper is a collaboration between two university professors and three researchers with the government-funded Institute for Defense Analyses. To conduct their analysis, the authors obtained detailed, person-level data on apprehensions at the southwestern border between fiscal years 2005 and 2012. They used fingerprint data to link repeated apprehensions, building a picture of who crossed the border and at what time.

More