An illegal immigrant released by a “sanctuary city” county in New Jersey was charged this week with a triple homicide halfway across the country in Missouri, authorities said Friday.
Luis Rodrigo Perez stands accused of being the gunman in a shooting spree last week that claimed the lives of two men and one woman, at two different homes.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said it tried to deport Perez after he was arrested on domestic violence charges in Middlesex County, New Jersey, last year. But the county, which has a non-cooperation policy with ICE, refused to alert the feds when it released Perez in February of this year, ICE said.
“Had ICE’s detainer request in December 2017 been honored by Middlesex County Jail, Luis Rodrigo Perez would have been placed in deportation proceedings and likely sent home to his country — and three innocent people might be alive today,” said Corey Price, acting ICE executive associate director.
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www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/nov/9/ice-illegal-immigrant-sanctuary-charged-3-murders/
Illegal Aliens Murder at a Much Higher Rate Than US Citizens Do
It’s time to fact-check the fact-checkers. The Washington Post’s Michelle Yee Hee Lee gave Donald Trump four Pinocchios for saying, “They’re bringing crime” across the border from Mexico. The Post scribe added, “Trump clarified that he was referring to cases where undocumented immigrants commit violent crimes or smuggle drugs.”
First off, Trump did not put any numbers on his statements. All he said was that some undocumented immigrants commit crimes in the U.S. And we know that is true.
Secondly, as even the Washington Post admits, Trump was not talking about all Mexicans, especially not Hispanic U.S. citizens. He was talking about undocumented immigrants.
The more problematic aspect is Trump’s implication that undocumented immigrants are more criminal than the average U.S. citizen. That implication is what the Washington Post “fact checked” and found false.
The Government Accountability Office has data that show otherwise. Here is the leading sentence from a 2011 GAO report (GAO-11-187, Criminal Alien Statistics, March 2011).
“The number of criminal aliens in federal prisons in fiscal year 2010 was about 55,000, and the number of SCAAP criminal alien incarcerations in state prison systems and local jails was about 296,000 in fiscal year 2009 (the most recent data available), and the majority were from Mexico.”
(SCAAP is the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program and in this context means “illegal aliens” – a GAO term meaning “Noncitizens whom ICE verified were [or whom states and local jurisdictions believe to be] illegally in the United States at the time of incarceration”.)
As for those federal prisoners, the GAO states, “In fiscal year 2005, the criminal alien population in federal prisons was around 27 percent of the total inmate population, and from fiscal years 2006 through 2010 remained consistently around 25 percent.”
The Washington Post cites an even higher number for 2013, 38.6%, yet dismisses those federal numbers as “not indicative of general crime trends of non-citizens,” because most criminals are incarcerated in state or local facilities.
The Facts
Per the GAO, “as of fiscal 2009, the total alien – non-U.S.-citizen – population was about 25.3 million, including about 10.8 million aliens without lawful immigration status.”
Since the population of the U.S. was about 306.8 million in 2009, non-citizens comprised 8.25% of the population and illegal aliens about 3.52%. (Recall that they represented 25% of the federal prison population then, and almost 39% in 2013.)
How many crimes did they commit? Almost three million. Here they are.
Now here is where the data get dicey: how do we convert these numbers to rates so that we can compare illegal aliens and non-citizens to other groups, such as U.S. citizens or inhabitants? We have to look at how the GAO determined those estimates.
“To determine the type of offenses for which criminal aliens were convicted, we analyzed data from the U.S. Sentencing Commission on federal convictions of criminal aliens from fiscal years 2003 through 2009 and conviction data from five states – Arizona, California, Florida, New York, and Texas – from fiscal years 2005 through 2008.”
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h/t Voluntaryist