Five Border Districts Used the New Federal Sentencing Rule Five Different Ways

The U.S. Sentencing Commission's first fiscal year 2026 report covers federal sentencings imposed between October 1 and December 31, 2025. It is the first report to reflect Amendment 836, which took effect November 1, 2025. The amendment removed the old framework of sentencing "departures" and created a single new adjustment under §3F1.1 for participation in an Early Disposition Program. EDPs are the fast-track plea programs that U.S. Attorneys run along the Southwest border to process immigration cases at high volume. A defendant pleads quickly, waives certain appeals, and accepts the facts as charged in exchange for a shorter sentence. Before November 1, an EDP reduction was recorded as a §5K3.1 departure. The Commission now records each EDP case in the category matching the sentence: within the guideline range, above it, or below it. That change makes a single quarter of data enough to compare how the border's busiest districts use the program. The five highest-volume border districts applied it five different ways.

The National Picture

Federal courts sentenced 16,341 people during the quarter. Immigration was the largest category at 6,634 cases, or 40.6 percent of the total. Drug trafficking followed at 3,522 cases, or 21.6 percent, and firearms at 1,893, or 11.6 percent. Nine in ten immigration defendants were not U.S. citizens. The most common charge was illegal reentry under §2L1.2, with 5,079 sentences, followed by alien smuggling under §2L1.1 with 667. The mean immigration sentence was eight months and the median was four. Courts applied the new EDP adjustment in 1,107 cases nationwide, or 6.8 percent of all sentences. Of those, 633 stayed within the guideline range, 460 went below it, 12 combined with a substantial assistance motion, and 2 went above the range. The 460 below-range EDP sentences fell mostly in immigration cases. Immigration accounted for 326 of them, drug trafficking 128, and firearms 4. In its first quarter, the new fast-track reduction was used almost entirely on the border.

District Patterns

The Commission breaks down where sentences fall relative to the guideline range by district in Table 9. The five busiest border districts split into three approaches. The Southern District of California sentenced 40.9 percent of its cases within the guideline range, the lowest of the five, and sent 24.3 percent below the range through the EDP adjustment, the highest. Arizona was close behind, with 60.4 percent within range and 19.3 percent below range through EDP. Both districts use the adjustment as their main tool for lowering sentences. New Mexico kept 82.9 percent of its cases within the range, the highest rate of the five, and used the EDP adjustment to go below the range in 5.9 percent. The Southern District of Texas kept 77.8 percent within range and used EDP below the range in 1.5 percent. The Western District of Texas kept 80.4 percent of its cases within the range and used the EDP adjustment to go below the range in zero cases, out of 2,693 where the sentence could be compared to the range. It was the only one of the five that did not apply the adjustment below the range at all.

Western District Rising

The Western District moved cases in the other direction more than any court in the country. It imposed 294 above-range sentences, 10.9 percent of its caseload. Nationally, courts imposed 684 above-range sentences, or 4.2 percent of all cases. The Western District accounted for 43 percent of every above-range sentence in the United States. The other border districts rarely went above the range. Arizona did so in 0.8 percent of cases, Southern California in 0.7 percent, New Mexico in 0.9 percent, and the Southern District of Texas in 1.4 percent. The Commission does not break down above-range sentences by district and crime type together, so the share of the Western District's 294 that were immigration cases cannot be calculated from this report. Nationally, immigration cases made up 331 of the above-range sentences. Across those cases, the median sentence was 12 months and the median increase over the guideline was four months, a 50 percent rise (Table 13).

What the Plea Data Shows

Table 12 reports plea status for the 9,650 cases with a Statement of Reasons revision date of November 2025. Among them, half of the EDP-within-range cases were resolved through a binding plea agreement, at 50.2 percent, compared with 8.2 percent for regular within-range cases. EDP cases are negotiated as fixed-sentence deals far more often than other cases, which matches the structure of a program where the sentence is set in advance.