EXCLUSIVE — The Trump administration is increasingly prosecuting illegal immigrants and smugglers arrested at the southern border as part of President Donald Trump’s crackdown on crime, the Washington Examiner has learned.

The Department of Justice has accepted a greater percentage and total number of cases from the Border Patrol since Jan. 20 than at the same point in the Biden administration last year, according to Border Patrol Chief Mike Banks.

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“We’re prosecuting for anything, any law they violate that [DOJ is] amenable to. … We’re seeing prosecutions at a rate we’ve never seen before,” Banks told the Washington Examiner in a Zoom interview Wednesday. “Referrals are up, but also the acceptance of referrals are up.”

The Trump DOJ and Border Patrol are working together to impose consequences on people who illegally enter the United States, are caught transporting illegal immigrants, are moving drugs into or from the border, and for other related crimes, all in an effort to deter future illegal immigration and narcotics trafficking.

The Justice Department told the Washington Examiner that it has charged 7,000 people with federal immigration charges since Jan. 20, a significant uptick from the most recently available public data in April 2022, which showed that just 2,000 cases were prosecuted that month.

“Prosecuting immigration-related crimes is a top priority of the Department of Justice,” a DOJ spokesperson wrote in an email.

In February 2024, the DOJ accepted 89% of the cases that the Border Patrol referred, compared to 96% in this February. Banks said that percentage is nearly 100% thus far in March.

“We had four days last week where we were one case shy of having 100% of all of our cases accepted [by the DOJ]. We missed one day of having an entire week of every case that we presented was accepted for prosecution,” Banks said.

The Border Patrol is referring cases to the DOJ for several types of federal crimes: bringing in, transporting, concealing, harboring, or encouraging the illegal entry of someone not authorized to be in the United States; the first-time illegal entry by an illegal immigrant; the reentry of a previously deported illegal immigrant; and drug trafficking.

“We’re also getting high acceptance rates on the assault on agents, so we’re seeing increases in those. We’re seeing increases in conspiracy cases, impersonating federal officers where you, where we encounter someone out there that is dressed like a law enforcement officer in order to avoid detection,” Banks said.

The increase in referrals comes as far fewer immigrants are attempting to enter the country illegally.

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The number of illegal immigrants encountered by Border Patrol agents has dropped from 60,000 per month in late 2024 to under 9,000 last month, yet agents have been bringing more cases for prosecution.

“Because we’ve been able to, to relieve ourselves of this large, mass humanitarian influx and drive those migrants to where they’re supposed to go, to the port of entry to make an application. It’s freed up our agents to go out and make these apprehensions,” Banks said.