Illegal alien aka ‘migrant’ crime spree accelerates

By Joe Guzzardi
Syndicated columnist

Immigration advocates are always on-the-spot with a prepared rebuttal to Americans who pose reasonable questions about whether a better way might be found to manage the inflow of foreign nationals. About those 10 million unvetted, under-educated, low-skilled, limited English speakers – they’ll grow the economy! 

But if immigration were beneficial for the economy, then America with its 46 million immigrant population, and unknown millions of illegal immigrants, the economy would be booming. Instead, little evidence exists that a higher, immigration-driven population translates to a richer economy. A country’s standard of living is determined by its per capita GDP. Slower population growth, less immigration, means a higher per capita GDP. Finally, if diversity were America’s strength, as has been repeated for decades, then the nation’s public schools attempting to educate millions of non-English speakers would be graduating budding Rhodes Scholars instead of students who can neither read nor do math at grade level.

Consider how the immigration lobby recasts crime as a social issue. Venezuelan illegal alien Jose Ibarra’s brutal murder of University of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley has sent pro-immigration advocates scurrying to dust off one of its well-worn, most baseless reports which claims, despite ample evidence to the contrary, that immigrants, legal and illegal, commit less crime than citizens. Their message: don’t worry about Ibarra; he’s an aberration. 

Kate Steinle, the young woman a Mexican national killed on a San Francisco pier in 2015 – she’s old news. But the following brutalities occurred in the last few months. Nilson Granados-Trejo, 25, the Salvadoran illegal alien who shot and killed a two-year-old infant in Maryland, is another statistical improbability as advocates rigged studies would point out. 

Local police ignored two detainers, and abetted Granados-Trejo in his murderous rampage. 

In Minnesota, an illegal alien dressed in a UPS uniform, killed three adults in the presence of two young children. ICE had issued a detainer request against the suspect who also had been convicted of felony gun possession. UPS hired Alonzo Pierre Mingo as a temporary employee. Blame UPS? The mainstream media’s myth that immigrants present no greater criminal danger than the everyday citizen became a talking point in California’s senate primary race. Campaigning, U.S. Rep. Katie Porter said that enforcement advocates shouldn’t let Ibarra’s murder of Riley “shape our overall immigration policy,” inferring that the murders of innocent Americans at the hands of illegal aliens is no big deal.

Except for Steinle, the other slayings are more recent and the perpetrators, border surgers. The Daily Mail compiled a partial list complete with mug shots that detailed illegal aliens’ crimes recently committed against unsuspecting victims. The charges against the illegal aliens, some previously deported multiple times, included murder, rape, sexual assault, child sexual assault, robbery, hit-and-run, assault on police officers, armed robbery, carrying a dangerous weapon, and vehicular homicide. The victims lived in Arizona, Colorado, Texas, New Jersey, New York, and Massachusetts---a veritable coast-to-coast illegal alien crime spree.

But, Cato Institute’s Vice President for Economic and Social Policy Studies Alex Nowrasteh insists that Americans have no cause for alarm. Shortly after Steinle’s brutal murder, a crime that Nowrasteh referred to as her “alleged murder” even though multiple-times deportee and convicted felon Jose Inez Garcia Zarate was found at the scene and charged with first-degree murder – hardly the definition of “alleged.” Nowrasteh’s bias in defense of criminal illegal aliens in his slanted studies has been adopted by other immigration advocates like the New York Times. Their collective but dubious conclusion: “immigrants are less crime prone than natives or have no effect on crime rates.” But the inarguable, key point is that if Garcia Zarate, Ibarra, and dozens of other illegal aliens who murdered citizens had never been allowed into the country, the victims would still be alive, a fact that cannot be intellectually denied.

Consider the CBP report on criminal non-citizen arrests that covered FY 2017 through FY 2024, year-to-date. The term “criminal noncitizens” refers to individuals who have been convicted of one or more crimes, whether in the U. S. or abroad, prior to the Border Patrol’s interdiction. What follows is a comparison of FY 2017 to FY 2023, the last complete 12-month period included. Total arrests, FY 2017, 8,531; FY 2023, 15,267; the dramatic increase in apprehensions reflects the lure that Biden’s open borders represents to criminal aliens. 

The CBP data excludes the estimated 1.6 million gotaways, mostly single, military-age males that have eluded immigration officials since Biden’s inauguration. Among them are hundreds of bad actors who otherwise would have chosen the easier option – surrender to CBP, get processed and be released into the interior. Combined, illegal border crossers reported since January 2021 is greater than the estimated individual populations of 38 U.S. states, and more than all U.S. cities with the exception of New York City, all U.S. counties with the exception of Los Angeles County, and the populations of over 120 countries.

Statistically speaking, millions of unvetted illegal aliens from lawless countries like Senegal, Haiti, Venezuela, and Cuba will assuredly have criminals among them. Brace for more crime, a spike so dramatic that no number of rigged studies will be able to minimize its consequences.

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst who has been writing about immigration for more than 30 years. 

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