Shams had been snared by a previously unreported federal effort that disproportionately locked up migrants from Muslim-majority countries for the obscure crime of failing to cross the border at a formal checkpoint and report to a customs office. The charge, conceived decades ago to fight drug trafficking, carries a maximum sentence of one year, double the length of the more well-known charge of illegal entry, which carries a top-end sentence of six months.

Only a fraction of the hundreds of thousands of people who cross the southern border each year are prosecuted for any crime at all. Most are turned back to Mexico or their home countries or released into the U.S after claiming asylum. Although the U.S. prosecutes thousands of migrants annually for reentering the U.S. after being deported, prosecutions of first-time border crossers are less common. For an 18-month period beginning in October 2021, however, the U.S. attorney’s office in Del Rio, Texas, charged more than 200 migrants with violating a rarely used and all but forgotten law — U.S. 19 1459, which states that anyone crossing into the United States must cross at a checkpoint and report to a customs office. More than 60% of those charged under the failure to report law were from Muslim-majority countries, including Afghanistan, Syria, Iran and Mali, according to a Times analysis of hundreds of federal court records. Citizens of Muslim-majority countries make up a tiny portion — much less than 5% — of the people who cross the southern border, according to government data.

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