Thread: Amnesty could drive up murder rates

'Catch and release' of illegals includes violent criminals

Published: 4 hours ago
Garth Kant

WASHINGTON – A leader of one of the nation’s largest organized-crime gangs cut a “swath of murder” through New York state with guns, knives, clubs and machetes, including the killings of a suspected rival gang member and a fellow gang member who was “not violent enough.”

A drunk driver traveled 35 miles in the wrong direction on three Phoenix-area freeways before crashing into a squad car and killing a police officer.

A vicious pimp in Baltimore was convicted of running a sex ring, enslaving women by force and pouring gasoline on the front door of the home of a family who tried to assist a prostitute.

What the perpetrators all had in common is they were in the United States illegally. These stories may be relevant to immigration policy because the Obama administration has released from custody tens of thousands of convicted criminals who entered the country illegally.

The stories are a few of the accounts of crimes committed by illegal immigrants that can be found on the website of Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, and which WND will report in more detail in the months to come.

Despite the president’s rhetoric to toughen up on criminal offenders when he announced executive amnesty for as many as five-million more illegal immigrants last November, critics say the evidence indicates administration policy to date has been just the opposite.

The Center for Immigration Studies, or CIS, reported data suggesting the extension of amnesty to millions of more illegal immigrants could lead to a rise in crime, including violent crime:

“Proponents of executive action to legalize aliens who are the subject of 10-year-old removal orders use benign-sounding language to describe it, but in fact this action would benefit some of the most egregious immigration scofflaws, including the man recently arrested for killing two sheriff’s deputies in northern California.”

CIS cites the release in 2013 of more than one-third of the illegal immigrants apprehended who were previously convicted of crimes including murder, kidnapping and rape.

During a tour of the Mexican border in July, Texas Gov. Rick Perry estimated that illegal immigrants have committed an astounding 600,000 crimes in the U.S. over the past six years.

That assertion appears to be supported by figures culled from government documents by CIS, which notes illegal immigrants, or aliens, are classified as “criminal” if they have been convicted of a crime, not including traffic offenses.

*Nearly 167,000 convicted criminals have been released by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.

*ICE released 68,000 criminal aliens in 2013, or 35 percent of the criminal aliens encountered by officers.

*In 2013, ICE freed 36,007 convicted criminal aliens from detention who were awaiting the outcome of deportation proceedings.

*About three-fourths of the aliens ICE detained in 2013 had criminal and/or immigration convictions so serious that the detention was required by statute.

*In 2013, ICE charged only 195,000, or 25 percent, out of 722,000 potentially deportable aliens they encountered. Most of these aliens came to ICE’s attention after incarceration for a local arrest.

According to CIS, the catch and release of illegal immigrants previously convicted of crimes “typically occur without formal notice to local law enforcement agencies and victims.”

And many of the crimes are not minor offenses, but include hundreds of violent and serious crimes, including murder, sexual assault, kidnapping, and aggravated assault and drunken or drugged driving convictions.

Also, many of those criminals had multiple convictions. The 36,007 convicted criminal illegal immigrants ICE released in 2013 had nearly 88,000 convictions, including:

193 homicide convictions (including one willful killing of a public official with gun)

426 sexual assault convictions

303 kidnapping convictions

1,075 aggravated assault convictions

1,160 stolen vehicle convictions

9,187 dangerous drug convictions

16,070 drunk or drugged driving convictions

303 flight escape convictions

CIS said it is important to recognize that those 36,007 criminal illegal immigrants are different from the 68,000 released in 2013 reported earlier (see above). The 36,007 criminal illegal immigrants were being processed for deportation and were freed while awaiting word on their cases, or afterward.

The center also maintained the vast majority of the releases from ICE custody were discretionary and not required by law.

CIS attributes the vast majority of the releases of criminal illegal immigrants to the Obama administration’s prosecutorial discretion policies, in which illegal immigrants “family relationships, political considerations, attention from advocacy groups, and other factors not related to public safety can trump even serious criminal convictions and result in the termination of a deportation case.”

The center cites the example of prosecutorial discretion directives issued by ICE headquarters which instruct officers to release illegal immigrants if they are a parent or caregiver, claims to be in school, has been in the U.S. a long time, or claims to be eligible for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program, which granted de facto amnesty to many of those who arrived in the country as children.

Obama’s recent executive action expanded the DACA program by removing the age limit so any illegal immigrant who arrived in the U.S. before age 16 can qualify. Obama also ordered deferred action on deportation, or amnesty, for those who have been in the U.S. for at least five years and have either a U.S. citizen or legal permanent resident child. The executive action is expected to provide amnesty for as many as five-million illegal immigrants.

CIS notes ICE has claimed it lacks the resources to deport more illegal immigrants than it has for the last several years, despite the fact it used its resources primarily to detain and process already apprehended by the Border Patrol, “whom the Border Patrol could remove, instead of deporting criminal aliens discovered by ICE officers in the interior.” Additionally, instead of providing more resources for ICE, “the administration has repeatedly asked Congress to give it less money for detention.”

There is evidence that releasing criminal illegal immigrants leads to more crime and more victims, as detailed in 2012 in a report commissioned by the House Judiciary committee.

According to CIS, “This analysis found that 26,000 illegal aliens who were released instead of removed went on to commit another 58,000 crimes soon after release. These additional crimes included 59 murders, 21 attempted murders, more than 4,000 major felonies and other 1,000 other violent crimes.”

http://www.wnd.com/2014/12/amnesty-c...-murder-rates/

Just a thought, wouldn't releasing violent criminals increase the opportunity to impose martial law?


America has been lost, no given away. by Americans. The decision now is to use whatever means to restore it, just like our founders made a decisions to create and build it in the eighteenth century!