Attorney General Jeff Sessions today spoke to Customs and Border Protection personnel at the United States-Mexico border in Nogales, Arizona.

In his remarks, the Attorney General announced that he has issued a memo to United States Attorneys that mandates the prioritization of criminal immigration enforcement. The memo directs federal prosecutors to focus on particular offenses that, if aggressively charged and prosecuted, can help prevent and deter illegal immigration.

Addit...ionally, the Attorney General revealed that the Department of Justice will add 50 more immigration judges to the bench this year and 75 next year. He also highlighted the Department's plan to streamline its hiring of judges, reflecting the dire need to reduce the backlogs in our immigration courts.

The Department of Justice warns that unscrupulous return preparers who prepare false tax returns will face civil and criminal enforcement. In the last year, the Department of Justice’s Tax Division filed dozens of civil actions throughout the United States seeking court orders to shut down dishonest return preparers who allegedly prepared false tax returns and in collaboration with U.S. Attorney’s Offices prosecuted dozens of returns preparers who prepared false tax returns.

...“Return preparer fraud is a significant drain on the U.S. Treasury, and the Justice Department is committed to working with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to bring enforcement actions against unscrupulous return preparers who prepare fraudulent tax returns,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General David A. Hubbert. “The Tax Division will use all available enforcement tools to hold dishonest return preparers accountable and protect the U.S. Treasury from further damage.”

U.S. Charges Russian FSB Officers and Their Criminal Conspirators for Hacking Yahoo and Millions of Email Accounts

A grand jury in the Northern District of California has indicted four defendants, including two officers of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), for computer hacking, economic espionage and other criminal offenses in connection with a conspiracy, beginning in January 2014, to access Yahoo’s network and the contents of webmail accounts. The defendants are D...mitry Aleksandrovich Dokuchaev, 33, a Russian national and resident; Igor Anatolyevich Sushchin, 43, a Russian national and resident; Alexsey Alexseyevich Belan, aka “Magg,” 29, a Russian national and resident; and Karim Baratov, aka “Kay,” “Karim Taloverov” and “Karim Akehmet Tokbergenov,” 22, a Canadian and Kazakh national and a resident of Canada.