Republicans, obviously fearful that poll numbers are not particularly helpful to Donald Trump, have decided to ramp-up the fear-mongering against brown-skinned immigrants (well, the Hispanic variety anyways), and got that thug organization operating under the color of the law, ICE, to compose a letter containing information that has been made publicly available before, most recently in "periodic" reports in 2016 and 2021. How is this “new” information being reported by some in the “mainstream” media?
Some major news outlets have gotten off their fundaments to fact check Trump and his cohorts' claim that there are, according to a Trump post on (add laugh track) Truth Social, “Kamala should immediately cancel her News Conference because it was just revealed that 13,000 convicted murderers entered our Country during her three and a half year period as Border Czar.” He added later that she has personally “allowed almost 14,000 MURDERERS to freely and openly roam our Country.”
Of course the “letter” sent by ICE deliberately misled. Why would it leave out the information that the numbers cited stretched back as far as the Reagan administration? Of course there are those who want to be "misled," neglecting to note that the letter didn't say that they all entered the country as "murderers," but did mentioned in passing that the vast majority were either in federal or state prisons (and thus not "detainable" by ICE), or had served their time but could not be deported due to lack of extradition treaties with countries of origin, or by the simple fact that the many (in fact most) of the "crimes" committed were not deportable offenses for legal residents, and were merely being "monitored."
The overall numbers of crimes in the letter look "big" but in fact given that they occurred over a 40 or so years period they are rather minuscule compared to overall crime in a given year, giving credence to the fact that immigrants (even the "illegal" type) are less crime prone than ordinary citizens:
The letter being bandied about includes these “crimes”—the worst being “larceny” which could mean shoplifting or stealing pens that don’t belong to you (that’s you, Ken Paxton):
“Conservation,” “Damage Property,” “Flight/Escape,” “Forgery,” “Fraudulent Activities,” “ Gambling,” “General Crimes,” “Health/Safety,” “Invasion of Privacy,” “Immigration,” “Larceny,” “Liquor,” “Obscenity,” Obstruction,” “Public Peace,” “Threat” and the biggest “crime,” Traffic Offenses.
These account for the majority of the “crimes” in the letter. Yet why should we trust anything provided by a thug organization like ICE? In 2019, another acting director, Matthew Ablence, claimed that, “Approximately 90 percent of Enforcement and Removal Operations administrative arrests in the interior of the country are of aliens that have prior criminal convictions, face pending criminal charges, are immigration fugitives or have been previously removed from the country and have illegally reentered.”
Yet a study by Syracuse University refuted this claim, noting that according to their research, only 2.8 percent out of 270,000 detainees they looked at during this ERO had “criminal activity” cited. The Cato Institute, which tore-up the ICE letter here 1 pointed out that if what Trump, Lindsey Graham and Fox News were saying was literally “true,” that would mean that 99 percent of all murders are committed by immigrants.
In another post about why the ICE should not be trusted with providing truthful information, Cato noted that ICE round-ups routinely
swept up U.S. citizens who were not accused of a crime other than being "suspected" of being “illegal,”
although the exact numbers are not “officially” known since the ICE naturally does
not track such numbers; however, extrapolating from statistics garnered from one Texas county, it may be as high as 20,000 across the country over the 10-year period investigated.
Not only were these not uncommon during the days of “Secure Communities,” but a study by the Berkeley Law Center, Secure Communities by the Numbers, found that Hispanic males, regardless if they had actually committed a crime (merely just "suspected"), were almost solely targeted by the program simply because they were Hispanic males:
The unauthorized population has a different composition, with 77% from Latin America, 13% from Asia and 6% from Europe and Canada. By either measure, however, Latinos are disproportionately impacted by Secure Communities. The data indicate that 93% of the people identified for deportation through Secure Communities are from Latin American countries, while 2% are from Asia and 1% are from Europe and Canada. The overwhelmingly large percentage of Latinos among those identified for deportation by Secure Communities raises serious questions…
…there is a strong perception in immigrant communities that the local police are acting as ICE agents. Community and advocacy groups have also asserted that Secure Communities is, in some jurisdictions, masking local law enforcement agencies’ practice of racial profiling. These jurisdictions are criticized for targeting Latinos for minor violations and pre-textual arrests with the actual goal of initiating immigration checks through the Secure Communities system…
…As outlined above, the data in our sample indicate that noncitizens who are arrested and brought to a local jail, and thus subject to Secure Communities, fit a particular profile, namely a young Latino male. Some might assert that since Secure Communities targets criminal aliens, this profile makes sense because they presume that this population (young immigrant Latino males) is more likely to engage in criminal behavior than the average U.S. citizen. This assertion is, however, not supported by the data.
When ICE begins deportation proceedings against an individual, it issues a removal charge indicating the reason for deportation. As explained further below, only approximately one quarter (27%) of the individuals in our sample were charged with removal based on a criminal conviction while others were charged with removal for a civil immigration violation or were issued no charge at all. Moreover, previous research studies have demonstrated that noncitizens are less likely, not more, to engage in criminal behavior.
Research has shown that immigrants have lower rates of representation in state and local jails and prisons thereby questioning the perception of immigrant criminality. Our next report will examine more closely the criminal history of the individuals in our Secure Communities sample but these initial data raise further questions as to why young Latino men are disproportionately represented in Secure Communities enforcement actions.
I remember once I was driving in Bellevue when I was pulled over by a white female cop because she claimed I hadn't switched on my turn signal "fast enough." She just looked at my driver's license and gave it back with a "warning." I think she was disappointed that I didn't have a Spanish name that would make me even more "suspect" than merely looking like one. Here we see that only 8 percent of those detained under “Secure Communities” committed what could be called a “serious” crime...
...while 19 percent of so-called “other criminal grounds” could mean a simple traffic ticket or saying an “obscene” word to a cop like what started that "riot" in New York City that made the rounds on Fox News, while 73 percent are either being deported for being in the country—or for “No Removal Charge Given.”
Nothing of this is new, of course. In a post before the 2020 election, I noted that “The New York Times is reporting that the ICE is ramping-up its deportations just in time for Donald Trump to start bragging about it in the run up to the election. According to the ‘interim’ director of the ICE, Tony Pham, ‘The aliens targeted during this operation preyed on men, women and children in our communities, committing serious crimes and, at times, repeatedly hurting their victims.’”
This was just a political stunt, given it was typical Trump administration paranoia-mongering with no factual basis. It was noted during a recent congressional hearing in which Marjorie Taylor Greene presented one of her infamous "charts" that the spike in border crossings actually began in the last months of Trump's term, apparently motivated to "hurt" Joe Biden and use it for cynical political reasons.
Just for some “context,” here are the homicide rates over a 60-year period, which saw a massive “spike” in 2020 (when Title 42 and “remain in Mexico” was still in force) and its hangover from the pandemic into 2021 and 2022 before falling by “record” rates in 2023:
This graph also shows how the biggest spike in homicides occurred during Trump’s last year in office, still during the Title 42 period:
But even when the Trump administration was actually rounding-up immigrants, it was for at worst guiltiness for minor offenses, as if someone like Stephen Miller needed any reason at all save simple racism. The Times noted that “the most common convictions or criminal charges pending” other than simple immigration violations were for “driving under the influence, followed by drug offenses.”
The Times also cited the Syracuse University study, which found that the “jump in the number of detained immigrants in 2019 was a direct result of arrests of people with no criminal records. ‘ICE makes it sound like they are snatching wanted felons off the streets when it conducts these operations,’ said Austin C. Kocher, a geographer at Syracuse University who analyzes immigration enforcement data. ‘We don’t get a full picture. They downplay the large numbers of people detained and deported who committed minor offenses, usually a long time ago, or who had no crime on record.’”
During the Trump administration, the brief frenzy for high numbers merely netted mostly gardeners, construction workers and maids—not “criminals.” Even those who committed actual crimes, the study showed “a higher percentage had been convicted of infractions such as driving without a license or immigration violations; a lower proportion of detained immigrants had committed violent crimes than before.”
Thus the ICE letter that Trump and Republicans are tossing about—which again isn’t “new” information, but is being treated as such, is being deliberately misinterpreted for purely cynical and hypocritical reasons, exploiting the paranoid, ignorant and uninformed:
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