John Smyth wrote:
> So much for the myth of illegal migrants being peaceful.
>
> 'Illegal Migrants Less Likely to Commit Crime? Guess Again.'
>
> <https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2024/11/25/illegal_migrants_less_likely_to_commit_crime_guess_again_1074276.html>
>
> 'In June, Victor Martinez-Hernandez was charged with the murder of
> Rachel Morin, a mother of five in Maryland. Police in Oklahoma tracked
> the accused repeat offender down with a sample of his DNA recovered from
> a Los Angeles home invasion in which a nine-year-old girl and her mother
> were assaulted. Police say he came to the U.S. illegally to escape
> prosecution for at least one other murder in his native El Salvador in
> December 2022.
>
> “That should never have been allowed to happen,” said Sheriff Jeffrey
> Gahler, referring to the numerous missed red flags the case presented.
> His office apprehended Hernandez in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
>
> Tulsa Police
> Victor Martinez-Hernandez: Charged with the death of Rachel Morin in
> Maryland.
> Tulsa Police
> Like the member of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua sentenced to life
> in prison last week for the murder of Laken Riley in Georgia,
> Hernandez’s case is shining a light on the federal government’s failure
> to properly vet and keep track of lawless migrants.
>
> These gaps have led to broad claims that illegal immigrants have less
> involvement with the criminal justice system than native-born Americans.
> A review of the available data, however, shows that the criminal records
> of millions of migrants – the ones President-elect Trump vows to
> prioritize for deportation – remain unknown due to illegal crossings,
> lax enforcement, and lax data collection by federal and “sanctuary”
> jurisdictions.
>
> In addition, an analysis of the available statistics by
> RealClearInvestigations suggests that the crime rate of noncitizens is
> vastly understated. A separate RCI analysis based on estimates developed
> by the U.S. Department of Justice’s National Institute of Justice (NIJ)
> suggests that crime by illegal aliens who entered the U.S. by July 21,
> 2024 cost the country some $166.5 billion. These criminals
> disproportionately entered the U.S. during the Biden administration.
>
> Pool Atlanta Journal-Constitution
> Jose Ibarra: Sentenced to life in prison for the murder of Laken Riley
> in Georgia.
> Pool Atlanta Journal-Constitution
> The problem begins with incomplete initial vetting by the U.S.
> Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The criminal histories of
> migrants from far-flung countries with often shoddy record-keeping are
> somewhat hard to determine. It is also impractical to hold each person
> until they have passed a rigorous background check. As a result, ICE
> routinely releases many illegals into the country on their own
> recognizance and then discovers afterward that many had criminal records
> in their home countries.
>
> In response to a request from Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales of Texas,
> ICE reported this summer that it has released 7.4 million such
> “non-detained” noncitizens into the U.S. during the last four decades or
> so. ICE reports that these include 662,566 noncitizens with criminal
> histories - 435,719 individuals with criminal convictions in their home
> countries and another 226,847 with pending criminal charges. These
> precise figures, however, do not say whether the crimes of the latter
> group were committed in the accused’s home country or the U.S.
>
> In the July 21 letter to Rep. Gonzales, ICE reported that 13,099 of
> these non-detained individuals have convictions for homicide, with 1,845
> facing criminal homicide charges. Another 9,461 have convictions for sex
> offenses (not including assault or commercialized sex), and 2,659 face
> pending charges. The convictions include other crimes such as assault
> (62,231), robbery (10,031), sexual assault (15,811), weapons offenses
> (13,423), and dangerous drugs (56,533).
>
> Pool Atlanta Journal-Constitution
> It's difficult to calculate all the victimization costs: Friends and
> family of Laken Riley react to the verdict in Athens, Ga.
> Pool Atlanta Journal-Constitution
> These figures are only suggestive of the extent of crime because they
> only list the most serious crime committed by each individual. A
> murderer, for example, who also committed a sex offense, is only counted
> as a murderer. It does not include the fact that millions of migrants
> are violating the law because of their presence in the U.S. It also does
> not account for the lawbreaking involved in working without proper
> authorization or the widespread use of stolen Social Security numbers to
> secure employment.
>
> The 662,566 convicted and likely criminals make up 9% of the 7.4 million
> released noncitizens.
>
> Riley family/Wikipedia
> Laken Riley: Her case illustrates the government’s failure to properly
> vet and keep track of lawless migrants.
> Riley family/Wikipedia
> The statistics miss much of the relationship between crime and illegal
> aliens. Noncitizens in the “national docket data” either surrendered to
> border agents or were apprehended at the border. Those who avoid
> surrender likely have reasons to evade authorities, such as a criminal
> background. But there are others who avoided being caught and won’t be
> in these numbers. That group includes “gotaways” – individuals observed
> crossing the U.S. border illegally but not apprehended or turned back.
> With up to 38% of border agents shifted from monitoring to processing
> duties and 30% of surveillance cameras not functioning, millions more
> likely entered the U.S. undetected, potentially including the most
> dangerous individuals.
>
> The Customs and Border Protection Agency estimates that some two million
> such “gotaways” have entered the country since 2021.
>
> The data on migrants who have been processed also understates the
> problem. Criminals rarely commit just one crime. For example, from 1990
> to 2002, in the 75 most populous U.S. counties, 70% of those convicted
> of a violent felony had a prior arrest, and 56% had a prior criminal
> conviction. In 2023 in Washington, D.C., the average homicide suspect
> had been arrested 11 times before committing a homicide. Data for 30
> states shows that 60.1% of criminals released from prison in 2005 had
> been arrested again within two years, and 73.5% had been arrested within
> four years. The ICE data set provides a single entry for each
> individual.
>
> Most violent crimes don’t result in an arrest, so looking at arrests or
> convictions in these other countries will underestimate whether illegal
> aliens are criminals. Across all U.S. cities in 2022, only 35.2% of
> violent crimes resulted in an arrest. While 50.6% of murders resulted in
> an arrest, just 24.1% of rapes produced an arrest, 22.7% of robberies,
> and 39.9% of aggravated assaults.
>
> WBFF Fox45 Baltimore/YouTube
> Heavy publicity: The suspect was long at large and evidently widely
> traveled in the U.S.
> WBFF Fox45 Baltimore/YouTube
> As the Laken Riley and Rachel Morin murder cases make clear, it is
> difficult to calculate all the victimization costs of crime to families
> and society.
>
> AP
> Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales of Texas: He got ICE to release
> statistics.
> AP
> Using tools developed by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), RCI
> did estimate what is likely the bare minimum economic costs of illegal
> alien crime. It arrived at its estimated cost to victims in dollar terms
> by assuming that each of the 662,566 “non-detained” noncitizen offenders
> on ICE’s list committed just once in the U.S. the crime for which they
> have been previously accused.
>
> ICE presented Rep. Gonzales with numbers on 42 different types of crime,
> but the NIJ only calculated the cost to victims for eight types of
> crime. Professor Mark Cohen at Vanderbilt University, who co-authored
> the original NIJ report, updated the list with 15 of the crime
> categories reported by ICE: murder, sexual assault, sexual offenses,
> robbery, assault, arson, burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft, weapon
> offenses, drugs, fraud, liquor offenses, gambling, and stolen property.
> Cohen’s updated numbers provide estimates for the damage from child
> abuse, drunk driving, and vandalism, but ICE did not collect numbers on
> those crimes.
>
> NIJ’s estimated losses from crime victimization include: medical
> care/ambulances, mental health care, police/fire service costs,
> social/victim services, property loss/damage, reduced productivity (at
> work, home, and school), and nonmonetary losses (fear, pain, suffering,
> and lost quality of life).
>
> AP
> Donald Trump embraces Patty Morin, mother of Rachel Morin, at a campaign
> rally in November.
> AP
> Murders account for almost $153.8 billion of the $166.5 billion in
> estimated criminal victimization costs (a breakdown of the costs of
> crime for each type of crime is available here). Another $6 billion
> involves sexual assaults/offenses, and an additional $5.2 billion comes
> from sexual assaults and sexual offenses.
>
> Half of the crimes these non-detained individuals commit don't have cost
> estimates. These crimes include kidnapping, embezzlement, extortion,
> smuggling, traffic offenses, and weapon offenses.
>
> These criminal illegal aliens entered the U.S. under multiple
> administrations, but the size of the problem was likely larger under the
> Biden administration. That isn’t just because so many more illegal
> aliens were entering the country. Under the Trump administration’s
> remain-in-Mexico policy, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
> (USCIS) performed background checks on immigrants. That included
> contacting immigrants’ countries of origin.
>
> ICE agents cannot access the same databases to check on the immigrants,
> and they don’t contact the immigrant’s home country. Plus, the massive
> inflow of immigrants has overwhelmed the system. The Deputy Director for
> ICE blames the “enormous workload” agents face, so they haven’t been
> able to do even the limited background checks they are doing. There are
> so many coming in that the government can’t house these immigrants until
> their backgrounds are properly checked.
>
> ICE has been processing criminals as they enter the country, but without
> identifying them as criminals. So, under the Biden administration, they
> have simply been released into the country. Now, they are walking freely
> in the United States, and no one knows where they are.
>
> As bad as these numbers are, the reality may be even worse. The
> Biden-Harris administration is accused of presenting the border crisis
> so that it does not look as bad as it is. In mid-September, retired San
> Diego Border Patrol Chief Aaron Heitk testified how the Biden
> administration ordered him not to publicize the arrests of illegal
> border crossers who they identified as having terrorist ties.
>
> The American Immigration Council, which strongly opposes President-elect
> Donald Trump’s deportation policies, estimates that it could cost $88
> billion to deport one million illegal immigrants. But if we accept its
> estimate and ignore the various government benefits that these
> individuals might be receiving, ICE’s number of 662,556 illegal criminal
> immigrants implies a cost of $58.3 billion to remove them – just over
> one-third of the conservative estimate given here of the cost of the
> crimes by these criminals.
>
> The estimate of over $160 billion in costs from criminal illegal aliens
> is very likely an underestimate of the true costs. It assumes the
> average criminal coming into the country commits only one offense
> similar to what he committed in his home country. We are also not
> counting the costs of half of criminal illegal aliens
>
so