Freedom Folks: It's Your Ass Folks

People like to pretend the only costs associated with ILLEGAL immigration are economic in nature, but that's somewhat less that truthful.

ILLEGAL immigrants commit an disproportionate amount of the crime in our country. Crimes by ILLEGAL aliens have always bothered me on a gut level, though I couldn't boil it down to the nub. It hit me the other day.

The reason I am so bothered by crimes committed by ILLEGAL immigration is these are the only crimes that are one hundred percent preventable. What other crime stat could you say that about? And every single one is an indictment of our government's failure to protect her citizens.

Worse yet, our safety is being coldly sold out in the name of money and trade. A calculation is being made in Washington that a certain number of gang rapes and murders are acceptable so long as the dollars flow and trade crosses the border.

Some details...

--In fiscal year 2002, 33.6% of all criminals sentenced in federal district courts under Federal Sentencing Guidelines were non-citizens, and 55% of these non-citizens were illegal aliens. This means that illegal aliens accounted for 17.5% of all crimes prosecuted in federal courts, whereas they are less than 6% of the adult population.

--There are 400,000 illegal aliens being sought by federal immigration agents as "absconders," individuas who have been ordered deported but cannot be located. Almost a 100,000 of them are criminals.

--From 1980 to 1999, the number of illegal aliens in federal and state prisons grew from 9,000 to 68,000. Today, criminal aliens account for almost 30% of the inmates in federal prisons and 15-25% in many local jails.

--Incarceration costs to the taxpayers were estimated by the justice department in 2002 to be $891 million for federal prison inmates and $624 million for inmates in state prisons.

--In 2004, the federal government reimbursed states and counties almost $300 million for 270,807 illegal aliens in custody in jails and prisons. This number does not
include illegal aliens in jails in states and counties that did not request reimbursement (such as Illinois and Wisconsin), so the real number is higher. (A
lot higher! ed.)

--From 1995-1999, the INS released over 35,000 criminal aliens instead of deporting them. Over 11,000 of them later committed swerious crimes. The data for 2000-2004 has not been released. (It WILL be worse, ed.)

--The Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Detention and Removal Office in Los Angelos says it has the manpower to process only10-12% of the estimated 40,000 illegal aliens who pass through the county jail year (24% of the total of 170,000). Over 30,000 were released back into the community.

--Over 23,000 individuals with criminal histories were apprehended by the Border Patrol in 2004 trying to enter the US illegally. No one knows how many crossed our open borders successfully.

--The Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office says there are over 300 murder warrants outstanding in L.A. County for illegal aliens who have fled to Mexico. They estimate there are 800 to 1,000 such warrants statewide in California and possibly 3,000 more nationwide.

--If an illegal alien arrested for a crime agrees to accept "voluntary removal" instead of going to trial for his crime, he is sent home but is not counted as being "deported." Thus, he has no criminal record if he re-enters the country. Local prosecutors often make this offer to save money, but such criminals often return and commit even more violent crimes. No one has yet calculated the cost of this practice in terms of additional crimes.

--Only the most serious criminals in our jails are detained and deported because of inadequate ICE manpower to investigate all foreign-born nationals and determine their immiration status. Over 200,000 illegal aliens who were incarcerated in local jails in 2004 were released back into the community instead of being deported.

--The US Attorneys in border regions do not routinely prosecute "coyotes" who smuggle illegal aliens into the country; they are usually sent back across the border with their "Clients." They are arrested and prosecuted only after the coyote's file has numerous apprehensions and several documented re-entries after deportation.