(Getty Images/Robert Nickelsberg)

(CNSNews.com) - Approximately 64 percent of the arrests that the federal government made in fiscal 2018 were of non-U.S. citizens, according to a report released today by the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics.

That represents a dramatic change from just two decades ago, when approximately 63 percent of federal arrests were of citizens and only approximately 37 percent were of non-citizens.

According to the data for fiscal years 1998 through 2018 that the BJS released today, federal arrests of non-U.S. citizen first surpassed federal arrests of citizens in fiscal 2008.

“In 1998, 63 percent of all federal arrests were of U.S. citizens; in 2008, 64 percent of all federal arrests were of non-U.S. citizens,” said the BJS report (“Immigration, Citizenship, and the Federal Justice System, 1998-2018”).

Although immigration and immigration-related offenses accounted for the vast majority of non-U.S. citizen arrests, non-citizens were also over-represented among those arrested for non-immigration offenses, according to the report.

“The five crime types for which non-U.S. citizens were most likely to be prosecuted in U.S. district court in 2018 were illegal reentry (72 percent of prosecutions), drugs (13 percent of prosecutions), fraud (4.5 percent), alien smuggling (4 percent), and misuse of visas (2 percent).”

“Non-U.S. citizens, who make up 7 percent of the U.S. population (per the U.S. Census Bureau for 2017), accounted for 15 percent of prosecutions in U.S. district court for non-immigration crimes in 2018,” said the report.

“In 2018,” it said, “non-U.S. citizens accounted for 24 percent of all federal drug arrests and 25 percent of all federal property arrests, including 28 percent of all federal fraud arrests,” said the report.

Table 4 in the report lists the number of federal arrests by the country of citizenship of the individual arrested for the fiscal years from 1998 through 2018.

The table shows that the largest total number of federal arrests in any of those years came in the latest year, fiscal 2018, when the federal government made 195,771 arrests.

That was up 88.5 percent from the 103,866 total arrests that the federal government made in fiscal 1998.

Of the 195,771 that the federal government arrested in fiscal 2018, 125,027—or 63.9 percent—were non-U.S. citizens.

That was up 233.5 percent from the 37,486 non-U.S. citizens the federal government arrested in fiscal 1998.

At the same time that the federal government was arresting 125,027 non-U.S. citizens in fiscal 2018, it was arresting 70,542 U.S. citizens.

That was up 10.0 percent from the 64,137 U.S. citizens the federal government arrested in fiscal 1998.

Of the 125,027 non-U.S. citizens that the federal government arrested in fiscal 2018, 78,062 (or 39.9 percent) were from Mexico; 39,858 (or 20.4 percent) were from Central America; and 7,107 (or 3.6 percent) were from other regions.

In the years since fiscal 1998, the most dramatic increase in the number of non-U.S. citizens arrested annually was among those from Central America.

From fiscal 1998 to fiscal 2018, the number of Mexicans arrested annually by the federal government grew from 28,388 to 78,062. That was an increase of 49,674—or 175 percent.

From fiscal 1998 to fiscal 2018, the number of Central Americans arrested annually by the federal government grew from 1,171 to 39,858. That was an increase of 38,687—or 3,303.8 percent.

From fiscal 1998 to fiscal 2018, the number of individuals from other regions arrested annually by the federal government declined from 7,927 to 7,107. That was a drop of 820—or 10.3 percent.