[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 3]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 3351-3352]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




  ELUSIVE CRIME WAVE DATA SHOWS FRIGHTENING TOLL OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT 
                               CRIMINALS

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. STEVE KING

                                of iowa

                    in the house of representatives

                       Wednesday, March 16, 2016

  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I submit the following:

                   [From FoxNews.com, Sept. 16, 2015]

  Elusive Crime Wave Data Shows Frightening Toll of Illegal Immigrant 
                               Criminals

                          (By Malia Zimmerman)

       The federal government can tell you how many ``Native 
     Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islanders'' stole a car, the 
     precise number of ``American Indian or Alaska Natives'' who 
     were arrested for vagrancy or how many whites were busted for 
     counterfeiting in any given year. But the government agencies 
     that crunch crime numbers are utterly unable--or unwilling--
     to pinpoint for the public how many illegal immigrants are 
     arrested within U.S. borders each year.
       In the absence of comprehensive data, FoxNews.com examined 
     a patchwork of local, state and federal statistics that 
     revealed a wildly disproportionate number of murderers, 
     rapists and drug dealers are crossing into the U.S. amid the 
     wave of hard-working families seeking a better life. The 
     explosive figures show illegal immigrants are three times as 
     likely to be convicted of murder as members of the general 
     population and account for far more crimes than their 3.5-
     percent share of the U.S. population would suggest. Critics 
     say it is no accident that local, state and federal 
     governments go to great lengths to keep the data under wraps.
       ``There are a lot of reasons states don't make this 
     information readily available, and there is no clearinghouse 
     of data at high levels,'' said former Department of Justice 
     attorney J. Christian Adams, who has conducted exhaustive 
     research on the subject. ``These numbers would expose how 
     serious the problem is and make the government look bad.''
       Adams called illegal immigrant crime a ``wave of staggering 
     proportions.'' He and other experts noted that the issue has 
     been dragged into the spotlight by a spate of cases in which 
     illegal immigrants with criminal records killed people after 
     being released from custody because of incoherent procedures 
     and a lack of cooperation between local and federal law 
     enforcement officials. The murders, including the July 1 
     killing of Kathryn Steinle, allegedly by an illegal immigrant 
     in San Francisco, have left grieving loved ones angry and 
     confused, local and federal officials pointing fingers at one 
     another and the voting public demanding secure borders and 
     swift deportation of non-citizen criminals.
       ``Every one (of the recent cases) was preventable through 
     better border security and enforcing immigration laws,'' said 
     Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for 
     Immigration Studies. ``They should have been sent back to 
     their home country instead of being allowed to stay here and 
     have the opportunity to kill Americans.''
       A spokesperson for U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement 
     told FoxNews.com that comprehensive statistics on illegal 
     immigrant crime are not available from the

[[Page 3352]]

     federal government, and suggested contacting county, state 
     and federal jail and prison systems individually to compose a 
     tally, a process that would encompass thousands of local 
     departments.
       FoxNews.com did review reports from immigration reform 
     groups and various government agencies, including the U.S. 
     Census Bureau, U.S. Sentencing Commission, Immigration and 
     Customs Enforcement, the Government Accountability Office, 
     the Bureau of Justice Statistics and several state and county 
     correctional departments. Statistics show the estimated 11.7 
     million illegal immigrants in the U.S. account for 13.6 
     percent of all offenders sentenced for crimes committed in 
     the U.S. Twelve percent of murder sentences, 20 percent of 
     kidnapping sentences and 16 percent of drug trafficking 
     sentences are meted out to illegal immigrants.
       There are approximately 2.1 million legal or illegal 
     immigrants with criminal convictions living free or behind 
     bars in the U.S., according to ICE's Secure Communities 
     office. Each year, about 900,000 legal and illegal immigrants 
     are arrested, and 700,000 are released from jail, prison, or 
     probation. ICE estimates that there are more than 1.2 million 
     criminal aliens at large in the U.S.
       In the most recent figures available, a Government 
     Accountability Office report titled, ``Criminal Alien 
     Statistics,'' found there were 55,000 illegal immigrants in 
     federal prison and 296,000 in state and local lockups in 
     2011. Experts agree those figures have almost certainly 
     risen, although executive orders from the Obama 
     administration may have changed the status of thousands who 
     previously would have been counted as illegal immigrants.
       Hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrant criminals are 
     being deported. In 2014, ICE removed 315,943 criminal illegal 
     immigrants nationwide, 85 percent of whom had previously been 
     convicted of a criminal offense. But that same year, ICE 
     released onto U.S. streets another 30,558 criminal illegal 
     immigrants with a combined 79,059 criminal convictions 
     including 86 homicides, 186 kidnappings, and thousands of 
     sexual assaults, domestic violence assaults and DUIs, Vaughan 
     said. As of August, ICE had already released at least 10,246 
     criminal aliens.
       David Inserra, a policy analyst for Homeland Security and 
     Cybersecurity at The Heritage Foundation, said letting 
     illegal immigrants convicted of crimes go free while they 
     await deportation hearings is putting the public at risk.
       ``While it is not certain how many of these individuals 
     were here illegally, most of these individuals were in 
     deportation proceedings and should have been detained or at 
     least more closely supervised and monitored until their 
     deportation order was finalized and executed,'' Inserra said.
       Adams opened a rare window into the dearth of public data 
     when he obtained an internal report compiled by the Texas 
     Department of Public Safety and revealed its contents on his 
     Pajamas Media blog. The report showed that between 2008 and 
     2014, noncitizens in Texas--a group that includes illegal and 
     legal immigrants--committed 611,234 crimes, including nearly 
     3,000 homicides. Adams told FoxNews.com that other states 
     have also closely tracked illegal immigrant crime, especially 
     in the wake of 9/11, but said the statistical sorting ``is 
     done behind closed doors.'' States closely guard the 
     statistics out of either fear of reprisals from the federal 
     government or out of their leaders' own insistence on 
     downplaying the burden of illegal immigrant crime, he said.
       ``There are a lot of reasons states don't make this 
     information readily available and there is no clearinghouse 
     of data at high levels,'' Adams said. ``These numbers would 
     expose how serious the problem is and make the government 
     look bad.''
       A smattering of statistics can be teased out of data made 
     public in other states heavily impacted by illegal 
     immigration, although a full picture or apples-to-apples 
     comparison remains elusive.
       In Florida, there were 5,061 illegal immigrant inmates in 
     state prison facilities as of June 30, but neither the state 
     Department of Corrections nor the Florida Department of Law 
     Enforcement track the number in county prisons, spokesmen for 
     those agencies told FoxNews.com.
       In Illinois, where state prisons house 46,993 inmates, some 
     3,755 are illegal immigrants, according to Illinois 
     Department of Corrections figures. Once again, state 
     officials do not compile figures for county jails, although a 
     Cook County official estimated that nearly 6 percent were 
     illegal immigrants.
       In Arizona, neither state public safety officials nor the 
     governor's office could produce figures showing the number of 
     criminal illegal immigrants held in county jails, but state 
     prison figures released by the Arizona Department of 
     Corrections show out of 42,758 prisoners held in state 
     facilities in July, about 10.8 percent were illegal 
     immigrants.
       In California, there were 128,543 inmates in custody as of 
     Aug. 12, but the state, which has been criticized for its 
     leniency toward illegal immigrants, no longer keeps track of 
     the citizenship status of inmates. As of July 31, 2013, the 
     last time figures were documented, there were as many as 
     18,000 ``foreign-born'' citizens in California state prisons 
     of 133,000 incarcerated. The Board of State and Community 
     Corrections provided figures to Fox News from 2014, showing 
     there were 142,000 inmates in 120 county prisons, but while 
     everything from mental health cases to dental and medical 
     appointments are closely tracked, the number of illegal 
     aliens--or even non citizens--is not.
       ``Frankly, this is something every state should track, but 
     they don't. Not even ICE publishes this much information on 
     offenders and immigration status,'' Vaughan said.
       Several pro-immigration groups contacted by FoxNews.com 
     declined to comment on the outsize role illegal immigrants 
     play in the U.S. criminal justice system. One group that did 
     insisted that even illegal immigrants provide a net benefit 
     to the U.S.
       ``Immigrants, regardless of their legal status, make 
     valuable contributions to our economy as workers, business 
     owners, taxpayers and consumers,'' said Erin Oshiro, of Asian 
     Americans Advancing Justice. ``We need an immigration system 
     that keeps families together, protects workers, and 
     prioritizes due process and human rights.''

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