New data shows the Obama administration and immigration enforcement (ICE) has sharply increased immigration prosecutions.

An analysis compiled by a private group using government data also found that there has been a decline in the Justice Department’s felony prosecutions aside from immigration cases, particularly outside the Southwest.

The study was released on February 1, 2011 by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a private, nonpartisan group based at Syracuse University that compiled the data from the first two years of the Obama administration and the last two years of the Bush administration.

TRAC said that felony immigration prosecutions in federal court systems along the border from Houston to San Diego went up 259 percent from 2007 to 2010, increasing nearly 16,000 to 36,321.

Picture: (C) Simon Howden http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=404