DHS/DOJ report: Thousands of avoidable crimes committed by foreign nationals in Texas

DHS/DOJ report: Thousands of avoidable crimes committed by foreign nationals in Texas alone


Daniel Horowitz · June 8, 2018

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https://www.conservativereview.com/w...ffs20sized.jpgVictor Yang | Getty Images


The number of crimes committed by foreign nationals in this country should be near zero. Why? Our allowance of immigration is a choice, and we should only be admitting the best of the best. To the extent we make a mistake with legal immigration or to the extent that there are illegal aliens, they should be immediately deported.


Yet thanks to our weak policies, a new report from the DHS and the DOJ paints a picture of crime and mayhem by foreign nationals. They are bringing drugs into this country and needlessly clogging up our federal criminal justice and prison system. A proper focus on expedited deportation and ending sanctuary cities would go a long way toward reducing crime, making illicit drugs less obtainable and more expensive, and saving money in our criminal justice system, a goal that is obsessively pursued by interest groups in both parties.


According to the report, there are a whopping 57,820 foreign nationals in DOJ custody. This includes 38,132 known or suspected aliens sitting in Bureau of Prisons (BOP) facilities post-conviction and 19,688 confirmed aliens in the custody of the U.S. Marshal Service (USMS), mainly pretrial detainees but also those already sentenced to short sentences or awaiting transfer to BOP custody. That alone accounts for 37 percent of those in the custody of USMS. There are several thousand more suspected but unconfirmed non-citizens in custody. These are all people in the regular federal criminal justice system, not in the immigration system under the auspices of ICE. The report is prepared every quarter at the direction of President Trump’s original executive order on immigration calling for an accounting of criminal aliens in the criminal justice system.


Here’s the kicker: 46 percent (17,621) of known or suspected aliens in BOP custody had committed drug trafficking or other drug-related offenses.
We are witnessing a newfound obsession in both parties with the cost of incarceration and the idea that too many people are sitting in prison for drug offenses (that they mischaracterize as simple possession rather than trafficking). But the drug population is only this prominent in the federal system, which only represents 11 percent of the incarcerated population. Most people are incarcerated in state facilities. And now we know, such a large percentage of them are in the federal system because of their immigration status. Thus, rather than a crisis of too many being incarcerated for drug charges, we have a crisis of too many illegal aliens bringing drugs into the country and then clogging our criminal justice system while poisoning our people.


As we’ve noted before, most illicit drug importation and distribution involves foreign nationals. If we only got immigration policy right – built the wall, ended incentives for amnesty and bogus asylum, outlawed sanctuary cities, and expedited deportations – we would not only alleviate the drug problem, we would stop clogging up the federal criminal justice system with other countries’ criminals. As the report notes, “68 percent (13,449) of all aliens in USMS custody were apprehended in the southwest region.”


Yet the same people pushing for “criminal justice reform” are the people who support the very immigration problems that have created this problem. If we would forge a bipartisan agreement to immediately deport many of these criminal aliens in DOJ custody (aside from those paying a debt of justice to individual victims or national security concerns like El Chapo), we would save a lot of money. If we stopped coddling criminal aliens and immediately deported them or had states immediately turn them over to ICE, they wouldn’t have to be in DOJ custody or clogging up state and local jails.


Moreover, if we implemented border and interior enforcement and ended all amnesty magnets, we wouldn’t have illegal immigration, and therefore, we would not have robust transnational drug cartel networks operating undetected in our country. Many downstream and secondary American drug traffickers would never have the opportunity to get involved in the drug trade, which in itself would reduce the flow of drug criminals into both federal and state prison. More importantly, fewer people would die.


This point was driven home by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. “Every crime committed by an illegal alien is, by definition, a crime that should have been prevented,” he said in the press release. “It is outrageous that tens of thousands of Americans are dying every year because of the drugs and violence brought over our borders illegally and that taxpayers have been forced, year after year, to pay millions of dollars to incarcerate tens of thousands of illegal aliens.”


This point is underscored by data cited by the DOJ for Texas’s criminal justice system. According to the DHS and the Texas Department of Public Safety, over 251,000 criminal aliens have been booked into local Texas jails between June 1, 2011, and April 30, 2018. They have been charged for a total of 663,000 offenses including:

• 1,351 homicides;
• 7,156 sexual assaults;
• 9,938 weapons charges;
• 79,049 assaults;
• 18,685 burglaries;
• 79,900 drug charges;
• 815 kidnappings;
• 44,882 thefts;
• 4,292 robberies.

Law enforcement actions have resulted in 296,000 convictions. The DHS has confirmed that 66 percent of those convicted were illegal aliens.


This is simply mind-blowing, but the report paints an even more dire picture. DHS notes that the numbers “do not account for all aliens in the Texas criminal justice system, as they are limited to criminal alien arrestees who have had prior interaction with DHS resulting in the collection of their fingerprints.” One can imagine that in any given year, 40-60 percent of illegal aliens are never identified by DHS but commit crime in the 50 states, particularly in the Southwest. If California was actually willing to provide the same comprehensive data Texas offers, it’s quite obvious the illegal alien crime burden it would reveal would be unconscionable.


There is much debate over the crime levels of immigrants. We discussed one aspect of it here. But these are all avoidable crimes. With clear enforcement and deterrent, along with immediate deportation of those who manage to get in or legal immigrants who commit crimes, we could avoid all of this and deal with our own domestic crime problem.


Also, for those in politics who don’t care about crime but are bothered by the cost of the criminal justice system, they need to understand that open borders are responsible for much of the direct cost. The report estimates that the cost of just those aliens housed in U.S. Marshal custody was $134 million just for one quarter! One can imagine the annual cost of combined total BOP and state custody.


“Criminal justice reform” for the federal system begins with border and interior enforcement on the immigration side. If we want to save both lives and money by deterring crime at its source, we need to be tough on crime and the border, not weak on both, as advocated by the political class and special interests.




https://www.conservativereview.com/n...n-texas-alone/

Yes, the House-passed jailbreak bill releases criminal aliens from prison

Yes, the House-passed jailbreak bill releases criminal aliens from prison



Daniel Horowitz · June 5, 2018

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https://www.conservativereview.com/w...rison-bars.jpgPrison cell in Alcatraz. Dave Nakayama | Flickr


Something funny happens when you actually take time to analyze a gravely transformative piece of legislation. It’s something that not a single member of the House who voted for the aptly named First Step Act got a chance to do: You understand the consequences of the bill.


Proponents of the bill, many of whom are pro-illegal alien to begin with, defensively insist that because deportable aliens (both illegal immigrants and criminal legal immigrants) are not eligible for good time credits, they will not be among those released into home confinement or let out early under the provisions of this bill. The problem is that Section 402, which is extremely dangerous as it pertains to the entire prison population, will mandate that the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) release a number of criminal aliens into home confinement at some point. This is what happens when no section-by-section summary of the bill is released, no hearings are held, and no amendments are made eligible.


Under current law, the Bureau of Prisons may release a prisoner into home confinement for the final six months or 10 percent of the sentence (whichever is less). Section 402 of the First Step Act mandates that BOPshall release anyone “with lower risk levels and lower needs on home confinement” for that period of time. The bill never defines “lower” risk, which to begin with is subjective, and which to proponents of this bill includes everyone convicted of drug trafficking and firearms violations. Even the early time credits portion of the bill still applies to armed robbers as long as they were never convicted for any death resulting from that robbery.


Therefore, it’s quite evident that any attorney general not named Jeff Sessions will deem tens of thousands of hardened heroin traffickers (who were often arrested for murder or robbery but were never convicted) as “lower risk” (notice how they are designated as “lower” and not “low” risk). But it’s worse than that. Some will say that a number of criminals, especially criminal aliens, just will not be designated at all. Well, the attorney general must issue some sort of assessment over all 180,000 prisoners within six months. This provision of the bill in itself is ludicrous, unfeasible, and wastes DOJ resources, but nonetheless it requires the DOJ to make a risk assessment for everyone, including illegal aliens. You can only imagine the one-directional pressure and scrutiny from the dozens of jailbreak groups demanding the loosest interpretation of risk assessment as possible.


The provision of the bill releasing tens of thousands of violent criminals into home confinement is bad enough for non-illegal aliens. As Thomas Ascik, a career prosecutor in North Carolina, warned, “ABC documented 50 cases nationwide of murders committed by prisoners who were supposed to be confined to home with ankle bracelets.” Home confinement is a joke, and this bill does not put the necessary resources into making it secure precisely because proponents want the talking point of saving money. But home confinement, as they well know, is even more costly than incarceration if done right. You can imagine the hardened criminals who will now be out under such a tenuous arrangement.


In my home county, a juvenile under home confinement went out and murdered a cop last month. Often, those on home detention commit violent crimes. Last year, one high-profile criminal was finally caught after 25 years of committing crime since being released into a halfway house. Without any statutory definition of “lower level,” it is simply legislative malpractice for anyone to vote for section 402 of this bill.


This brings us back to immigration. Under current law, home confinement at the end of the prison sentence is elective, so the BOP has elected not to make deportable aliens eligible for this arrangement because they are an obvious flight risk. Thus, at the end of their sentences, the U.S. marshals transfer them over to ICE custody for deportation proceedings.


Under the proposed law, on the other hand, the BOP must release anyone designated as “lower level” risk into home confinement. This part of the bill, unlike the time credits for “recidivism” programs, made no exceptions for deportable aliens. Such a provision was in the original bill but was removed. Members of Congress didn’t bother reading either version of the bill. The original bill required the DOJ to transfer any deportable over to ICE, and that would have covered those released under section 402. Without that provision, there is nothing stopping the release of illegals under the “lower level risk” provision.


We already know that these same advocacy groups on the Left and the phony Right view both drug trafficking and immigration crimes as “lower level.” They are quite passionate about that. This means that a goodly number of criminal aliens in prison would easily be deemed lower level. Again, that would be an inconsequential distinction if they were to be immediately transferred to ICE and deported. But once they are let into home confinement, raise your hands if you think they will ever wind up being deported.


Consider the killer of Kate Steinle, Jose Garcia Zarate. He was acquitted on state murder and manslaughter charges, but the feds are prosecuting him for gun laws and re-entry. Both these crimes are deemed as low-level by proponents of jailbreak, even though we know he murdered Kate Steinle.


This is the big lie about the nature of those in federal prison. Aside from a large contingent of foreign nationals who should be deported, the federal population includes many career criminals. According to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, 72.8 percent of federal offenders sentenced in fiscal year 2016 had been convicted for prior offenses, at an average rate of 6.1 crimes per criminal. Many of them have been arrested for or even convicted of violent crimes in the state system. Garcia Zarate is the quintessential profile of a federal prisoner.


Sadly, the entire jailbreak effort is built upon a lie. Proponents won’t even admit that illegal aliens are being released by this bill after they purposely removed a section of the bill blocking it.




https://www.conservativereview.com/n...s-from-prison/