Thread: OR: ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION AND CRIME

ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION AND CRIME
Sunday, May 25, 2008RICHARD F. LAMOUNTAIN

Petitions are circulating to put the Respect for the Law Act onto Oregon's November ballot. If passed, the act will repeal the portion of state law that purports to forbid police and sheriffs from "detecting or apprehending persons whose only violation of law is that they are persons of foreign citizenship present in the United States" illegally. Instead, the act will affirm Oregon officers' court-recognized authority to partner with federal agencies to enforce immigration law.

Why should Oregonians seek to enlist their law enforcement agencies in the battle against illegal immigration? Mainly, because illegal immigrants' presence undermines Americans' most precious inheritance: the rule of law. Another reason, as statistics demonstrate: Illegal immigrants commit more serious crime than the population at large.

Jim Kouri, a vice president of the National Association of Chiefs of Police, reported recently that two-thirds of illegal immigrants have been arrested and 61 percent convicted at least once. The Federation for American Immigration Reform recently summarized a federal government study that showed "deportable criminal aliens were more than half again as likely to be incarcerated as their share of the population."


Criminal aliens, scholar Edwin S. Rubenstein reports, account for 27 percent of federal prisoners; "80,000 to 100,000 illegal immigrants who have been convicted of serious crimes," he writes, "still walk the streets."

Recently, the federal Government Accountability Office analyzed the criminal records of 55,000 incarcerated illegal immigrants. It found, Investor's Business Daily reported last month, "that the average criminal alien was arrested for 13 prior offenses, 12 percent of which were cases of murder, robbery, assault and sexually related crimes; only 21 percent were immigration offenses, the rest being felonies."

Every day, estimates U.S. Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, uninsured illegal immigrants driving drunk kill 13 Americans.

What, specifically, of Oregon? Illegal immigrants employed by Mexican drug cartels smuggle methamphetamine to the metro area; in mid-May, federal agents detained several they say aided a major Portland-to-Woodburn distribution ring.

George Orr of the federal Bureau of Land Management recently told The Oregonian of the cartels' marijuana-growing operations on eastern Oregon's public lands.

Gangs fueled by illegal immigration plague Multnomah County, including the 18th Street gang, which stretches north from Southern California and thousands of whose members (as per scholar Heather MacDonald) are illegal immigrants. And last summer, The Oregonian reported, more than 1,000 of Oregon's 13,300 state prisoners were foreigners -- many here illegally -- who had committed crimes meriting deportation. About 350 had been imprisoned for crimes involving sex, including rape.

The federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency enforces immigration law in America's interior. But only 4,000 or so agents are dedicated to that end -- a number, attorney Charles Smith has argued, that "cannot possibly even begin to meet the law-enforcement needs generated by 10 million to 20 million" (and possibly more) illegal immigrants.

Local police and sheriffs, Smith writes, are "in a very advantageous first-line-of-defense position to help enforce the nation's immigration laws" and can provide outnumbered ICE agents a valuable "force multiplier."

Late last year, ICE reported that more than two dozen state and local law enforcement agencies had partnered with it to help make 25,000-plus arrests. With such partnerships, ICE noted, many local agencies are assuring "criminal aliens . . . are not released into the community upon completion of their sentences."

The Respect for the Law Act will affirm the right of Oregon's police and sheriffs to help the federal government enforce immigration law -- and in doing so, better fulfill their responsibility to the citizens they are sworn to protect. Before the July 1 deadline, Oregon's registered voters should sign petitions (available at respectforlawact.com) to put the Respect for the Law Act onto the November ballot.

Richard F. LaMountain is a former assistant editor of Conservative Digest magazine.

www.oregonlive.com

WTG , Oregon you let it happen . Now you pay the price . Your citizens begged a year ago to stop the Illegal Invadsion . And you screw balls passed laws to protect the law breakers . Reap what you Sow Oregon

I just hope ICE shows up and picks the illegals up once the police get them. I know one department even with some misdemeanors they will take them to the nearby Border Patrol Office as ICE usually not come and get them.