Prosecutorial discretion exercised in only 2% of cases
The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse published a recent report on the exercise of prosecutorial discretion in immigration cases. Informal reporting of the exercise of such discretion, created under a pilot federal program by President Obama last year, seemed to suggest a grant rate of over 10%. However, TRAC found instead that the actual rate of the exercise of discretion was a meager 1.9% overall, of the total number of pending cases. There are certain qualifiers to these numbers, such as the growth of pending cases as immigration authorities suspend cases while background checks are completed; however it seems the actual rate of the exercise of prosecutorial discretion is incredibly low. Other reports by the Immigration Policy Center indicate that ICE determined very few immigrants are eligible for this relief at all; in only 7.2% of cases, or 20,648 cases of the total federal caseload of approximately 300,000. Of those eligible, it appears some portion are refusing this 'administrative closure' of their case to avoid the purgatory status they would receive, and others are refused despite eligibility. The entire report can be found here: ICE Prosecutorial Discretion Latest Details as of June 28, 2012