Crimes by
Illegal Immigrants Widespread Across US – Sanctuaries Shouldn’t Shield Them
By Hans A. von Spakovsky
“more Mexicans
than U.S. citizens were arrested on charges of committing federal crimes in
2018.”
Hans von
Spakovsky: Crimes by illegal immigrants widespread across US – Sanctuaries
shouldn’t shield them
The decision by a California appeals court Friday overturning
the conviction of an illegal immigrant who shot and killed Kate Steinle in San Francisco in 2015
once again put the national spotlight on the serious problem of crimes
committed by people in the U.S. illegally.
The appeals court in San Francisco overturned the conviction of Jose Inez Garcia-Zarate on a charge of being a felon in
possession of a firearm. Garcia-Zarate was earlier found not guilty of first-
and second-degree murder, involuntary manslaughter and assault with a
semi-automatic weapon.
Garcia-Zarate said he unwittingly
picked up a gun, which he said was wrapped in a T-shirt, and it fired
accidentally. The appeals court overturned his conviction on the firearm
possession charge because it said the judge at his trial failed to give the
jury the option of finding him not guilty on the theory that he only possessed
the gun for a moment.
Opponents of federal efforts to
enforce the immigration laws enacted by Congress repeatedly claim that illegal
immigrants are “less likely” to commit crimes than U.S. citizens – and thus
represent no threat to public safety. But that’s not true when it comes to
federal crimes.
Non-citizens
constitute only about 7 percent of the U.S. population. Yet the latest data from the Justice
Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics reveals that non-citizens accounted
for nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of all federal arrests in 2018. Just two
decades earlier, only 37 percent of all federal arrests were non-citizens.
These arrests aren’t just for
immigration crimes. Non-citizens accounted for 24 percent of all federal drug
arrests, 25 percent of all federal property arrests, and 28 percent of all
federal fraud arrests.
In 2018, a quarter of all federal
drug arrests took place in the five judicial districts along the U.S.-Mexico
border. This reflects the ongoing activities of Mexican drug cartels. Last
year, Mexican citizens accounted for 40 percent of all federal arrests.
In fact, more Mexicans than U.S.
citizens were arrested on charges of committing federal crimes in 2018.
Migrants from Central American
countries are also accounting for a larger share of federal arrests, going from
a negligible 1 percent of such arrests in 1998 to 20 percent today.
Critics will try to downplay the
importance of the Justice Department’s report by pointing out that the majority
of crimes in the United States are handled by prosecutors in state and local
courts. But even there the data is shocking.
A
recent report from the Texas Department
of Public Safety revealed that 297,000 non-citizens had been “booked into local
Texas jails between June 1, 2011 and July 31, 2019.” So these are non-citizens
who allegedly committed local crimes, not immigration violations.
The report noted that a little
more than two-thirds (202,000) of those booked in Texas jails were later
confirmed as illegal immigrants by the federal government.
According to the Texas report,
over the course of their criminal careers those illegal immigrants were charged
with committing 494,000 criminal offenses.
In fact, more Mexicans than U.S.
citizens were arrested on charges of committing federal crimes in 2018.
Some of these cases are still
being prosecuted, but the report states that there have already been over
225,000 convictions. Those convictions represent: 500 homicides; 23,954
assaults; 8,070 burglaries; 297 kidnappings; 14,178 thefts; 2,026 robberies;
3,122 sexual assaults; 3,840 sexual offenses; 3,158 weapon charges and tens of
thousands of drug and obstruction charges
These
statistics reveal the very real danger created by sanctuary policies. In nine
self-declared sanctuary states and numerous sanctuary
cities and counties, officials refuse to hand over criminals who are known to
be in this country illegally after they have served their state or local
sentences.
This refusal to cooperate with
federal immigration officials suggests that state and local officials
supporting the sanctuary movement believe it’s better to let these criminals
return to their communities rather than being removed from this country. Not
all of their constituents would agree.
The Texas report is careful to
note that it is not claiming “foreign nationals” commit “more crimes than other
groups.” Whether that is true or not – and it is certainly true when it comes
to federal crimes – is irrelevant.
What is highly relevant to the
current debate about immigration policy is that the Texas report “identifies
thousands of crimes that should not have occurred and thousands of victims that
should not have been victimized because the perpetrators should not be here.”
We know that in Texas and around
the country some individuals would be alive today – and their families would
not be mourning their loss – if we had a secure border and an effective
interior enforcement system.
Instead of trying to obstruct
enforcement of our immigration laws, state and local officials should do
everything they can to help the feds reduce the very real – and all too often
fatal – dangers posed by criminal illegal immigrants.
One of the worst recent examples
of a state official who refuses to help federal immigration authorities carry
out their duties is North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper.
The
Democratic governor recently vetoed a bill that would require
local law enforcement to cooperate with federal immigration authorities. Cooper
did so just days after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents
captured an illegal immigrant charged with first-degree rape and indecent
liberties against a child.
Acting
ICE Director: ICE Removed More Than 145,000 Criminal Aliens Last Year,
Including 10,000 Gang Members
Listen to the Article!
(CNSNews.com) - Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) made more than 105,000 criminal arrests last year and removed
more than 145,000 criminal aliens, “to include the arrests of nearly 10,000
gang members and the removal of another 6,000,” acting ICE Director Matt
Albence said Thursday.
Speaking to reporters at the
White House, Albence warned about the dangers of sanctuary cities, calling it a
“public safety matter.”
“We are here today to help the
public understand the human cost of sanctuary laws and policies, which ban and
prevent local law enforcement agencies from working with ICE to include even
the simple sharing of information about criminals already in their custody.
Laws and policies like these make us all less safe plain and simple,” he said.
Albence said that 70 percent of
ICE arrests are made at local jails and state prisons nationwide, “but we used
to make more, and we used to get more criminals off the street before sanctuary
laws and policies prevented us from doing so.”
“There’s a lot of misinformation
out there with regard to how we do our operations and what is required, so I’m
going to give a little bit of information and context to dispel some of those
myths and misinformation that’s out there,” the director said.
“One myth is the sanctuary
jurisdictions along with many politicians and members of the media continually
perpetuate is that ICE doesn’t prioritize its limited enforcement resources.
Nothing could be further from the truth,” he said.
Albence said that 90 percent of
the people that ICE arrests in the interior of the country “are convicted
criminals, individuals who’ve been charged with a criminal violation, are
immigration fugitives or are illegal re-entrants, meaning they’ve been through
the immigration court process previously, been deported and re-entered
illegally, which is a federal felony and one of which we received 7,000
convictions for last year.”
“And immigration fugitives, to be
clear as well, are those individuals who’ve had their day in court, have
exhausted all forms of due process, have been ordered removed by an immigration
judge, and failed to comply with that removal order,” the director said.
“Many sanctuary jurisdictions
will also incorrectly assert that they cannot hand over custody of criminal
aliens in their jails unless ICE provides an arrest warrant signed by a federal
judge. Those that say that are either willfully ignorant or patently
disingenuous,” Albence said.
“The truth is that federal law
does not provide any mechanism for judicial warrants to be issued for civil
immigration violations. There is not a single judge, magistrate anywhere in
this country that has a lawful authority to issue a warrant for a civil
immigration violation. By statute, Congress has given this authority solely to
supervisory immigration officers. This is one of the ways in which our system
-- the immigration enforcement system -- differs from the criminal justice
system, and it's perfectly lawful,” he said.
Albence said that of the nearly
1,300 arrests made this week, ICE officers arrested “nearly 200 who could’ve
been arrested at the jail if the detainer had been honored.”
“Of the criminal aliens we took
into custody this week, three had convictions for manslaughter or murder. One
hundred had convictions for sexual assault or crimes, with the victims of
nearly half of them being children. Seventy had convictions for crimes
involving drugs, and more than 320 had convictions for driving under the
influence of drugs or alcohol,” he said.
About
That Statistic Of “Immigrants” Committing Fewer Crimes Than Citizens
JAZZ
SHAW
How
many times have you heard the carefully worded claims from media “experts”
about how immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than citizens? If you
follow the news at all closely I’m guessing it’s been fairly often. Of course,
the careful wording is required so they don’t have to invoke the phrase
“illegal immigrants” (i.e. illegal aliens) and ruin their narrative.
Nearly
3 percent of illegal immigrants in Arizona end up in state prison or jail
during the course of a year — four times the rate of U.S. citizens and legal
residents, according to a study that uses federal reimbursements for prisons
and jails to try to calculate one of the most important yet elusive statistics
in the immigration debate.
In
New Jersey, illegal immigrants are incarcerated five times more often, and
rates on the West Coast are triple that of legal residents and citizens,
according to the study by the Federation for American Immigration Reform.
FAIR based its calculations on
federal government reimbursements to states and localities under the State
Criminal Alien Assistance Program, which pays some of the costs for holding
illegal immigrants in prisons and jails. To make the payments, the federal
government must determine whether an inmate is definitely or possibly in the
country illegally.
One
important feature of this study is that it’s only looking at people who have
definitely been convicted of a crime, not simply arrested or suspected. Also,
as I noted above, this study draws a distinction between legal immigrants (who
arguably have the lowest rate of criminal convictions) and illegal aliens.
A previous Arizona study done by John Lott found the
same thing, though with a smaller population sample.
It’s
worth noting that this methodology has drawn criticism. The SCAAP data measures
a different set of prisoners than other samples, leading some critics to
question whether the results would be the same if we looked at the entire
prison and jail population. I’ll leave that one for the statisticians to sort
out, but overall trends still appear to conform with previous attempts at
quantifying these numbers.
So
what does that mean in terms of the current policy debate over illegal
immigration, the wall and all the rest? Our friend Jeff Dunetz weighed in on that question and concludes that
significantly reducing illegal immigration could only produce lower crime
rates.
The above crime numbers and rates
for illegal immigrants reflect offenses that would not have happened, or at the
very least would be significantly reduced if the U.S borders were secured and
illegal immigrants were not permitted into the country. Border Protection
agents and Ice officials, the people on the ground, tell us that barriers work.
The victims of those 121,984 crimes can thank liberals and Democrats for not taking
action to prevent their victimhood.
Yet
again, we should remind ourselves that these numbers fail to deal with the
underlying fact that every illegal alien is committing a crime simply by being
in the country. In that sense, the crime rate among illegals is technically
100% before you even begin counting other violations of the law. But that sort
of view is considered heresy on the left and in much of the media these days.
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