ProPublica is publishing the federal court data behind our story “The Trump Administration’s ‘Disturbing’ New Legal Strategy to Prosecute Border Crossers Is Taxing Courts and Testing the Law.” The data is a list of more than 4,700 cases where immigrants were charged with entering the country illegally while facing additional misdemeanor counts accusing them of trespassing on military property.
This dataset covers cases filed in New Mexico and West Texas between April 2025 and February 2026. You can explore the cases, where they were filed and their outcomes. For example, you can use this data to see that the military trespass charges were dropped or dismissed in about 60% of the resolved cases.
ProPublica collected this data using records from Public Access to Court Electronic Records and the Free Law Project’s CourtListener.
The data is provided in two formats: JSON and CSV. The CSV includes information about each case, with links to CourtListener and PACER. The JSON provides more details on the individual charges and their outcomes, including disposition and status.
If you are a journalist or researcher, we’d be interested to know how this database helps you do your work. Please email us at agnel.philip@propublica.org or pratheek.rebala@propublica.org to get in touch.
The district the case was tried in, either New Mexico ("nmd") or the Western District of Texas ("txwd").
PACER’s unique identifier for the case.
The date the case was filed. In some cases, this may refer to the date the complaint was filed. In others, it may refer to the date the charging document (such as an information) was filed.
If filled out, this refers to the date when the court closed the case. If this is blank, that may not necessarily mean the case or charges aren’t resolved. More information on how to identify the outcome of the case in the “charges” field of the JSON file.
The docket number used in the case. Note: If you look this case up in PACER, specify the district you’re looking in.
The judge assigned to the case. This may not always be the judge who handled every hearing in the case. The presiding judge is listed in each docket entry on PACER or CourtListener.
In the CSV, this is a list of charges in the case separated by a new line.
In the JSON, it is an array. There are three fields:
- "name": the name of the charge.
- "status": the status of the charge. A status of "1" refers to a pending charge. A status of "2" refers to a terminated charge.
- "disposition": the outcome for the charge, including, if applicable, sentencing information.
While we pulled this information directly from PACER, there are some known issues. In some cases, every charge is listed as one entry. In many cases, there is a mistake in the charge name labeling it as a "concealment of facts about reentry" charge rather than "illegal entry without inspection."
For our analysis, we labeled all charges that either had a value in the "disposition" field or had a status of "2" as resolved. Cases with a status of "2" and a blank "disposition" were labeled as dismissed.
A link to the corresponding case in the CourtListener database.
A link to the corresponding case in PACER.
We are releasing this data under a Creative Commons BY-NC 4.0 license, meaning you may use it for noncommercial purposes as long as you attribute ProPublica and link back to our story.
