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LOS ANGELES U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said he will not stand back and let the national murder rate continue to rise.

During a stop in Las Vegas on Wednesday, the attorney general said he plans to hire 300 additional federal prosecutors to fight violent gangs like MS-13, a ruthless criminal enterprise with roots in El Salvador.

The national murder rate has increased 10 percent the past year. According to Sessions, thats the largest increase since 1968.

Sessions was in the City of Lights to continue his fight against Sanctuary Cities. He said too many jurisdictions are still refusing to cooperate with federal authorities and are protecting criminal who, under federal law, should be deported.

SESSIONS SAYS SANCTUARY CITIES RISK LOSING DOJ, DHS GRANTS

The Justice Department is threatening to withhold federal funding from cities that dont cooperate with federal officials in enforcing immigration laws.

An illegal immigrant taken into custody. (Fox News)

"When cities like Philadelphia, Boston or San Francisco advertise that they have these policies, the criminals take notice," Sessions said in Vegas.

He said lax immigration enforcements leads to increased violence. He pointed to Kate Steinle, who was killed by an illegal immigrant in San Francisco who allegedly moved to that city because of its sanctuary status.

"Her death was preventable and it should have been prevented," Sessions said. "He walked the streets freely because San Francisco refuses to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In fact, he admitted that one reason he was in San Francisco that day was that he knew the city had these policies in place."

SANCTUARY CITIES LOSE ACCESS TO FEDERAL GRANTS THAT REQUIRE COMPLYING WITH FEDERAL IMMIGRATION LAW CUE THE HISTORIANS

Right now, four cities, four counties and two sanctuary states are undergoing a legal review by Sessions, including Vegas, where he urged Clark County to cooperate with ICE. In all, he said, some 300 jurisdictions refuse to cooperate with federal immigration officials.

ICE agents, even in hostile sanctuary cities like Los Angeles, continue to target criminal aliens. (Fox News)

These jurisdictions, he said, are protecting criminals rather than their law-abiding residents.

He said cooperation will help the government dismantle gangs like MS-13, which is wreaking havoc across the country.

To take these gangs off of our streets, he said, we need cooperation between law enforcement at the federal, state and local levels.

More:
Sessions says when cities protect illegal immigrants, 'criminals take notice' - Fox News

This article first appeared on the Cato Institute site.

The House of Representatives recently passed the No Sanctuary for Criminals Act (H.R. 3003) and Kates Law (H.R. 3004) to tighten immigration enforcement in response to the fear that undocumented immigrants are especially likely to commit violent or property crimes.

Both laws stem from the tragic 2015 murder of Kate Steinle by an undocumented immigrant named Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez after he had been deported multiple times.

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Debates on the House floor over both bills veered into the social science of immigrant criminality. The majority of research finds that immigrants are less likely to be incarcerated than natives and that increases in their population in local areas are correlated with lower crime rates even forundocumented immigrants.

Despite that wealth of empirical evidence, a two-year-old Fox News piece entitled Elusive Crime Wave Data Shows Frightening Toll of Illegal Immigrant Criminals by investigative reporter Malia Zimmerman was offered as evidence of undocumented immigrant criminality.

Ms. Zimmermans piece makes many factual errors that have misinformed the public debate over Kates Law and the No Sanctuary for Criminals Act. Below, I quote from Ms. Zimmermans piece and then respond by describing her errors and what the actual facts are.

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.

Ms. Zimmerman writes that those statistics are for crimes committed in the U.S., but they are actually only for some federal sentences in 2014 and not nationwide figures according to a report by the U.S. Sentencing Commission that is the primary source of these figures.

Travelers from the Middle East arrive at Los Angeles International Airport on June 29, 2017, where free legal advice was offered and activists protested Donald Trump's ban temporarily barring entry into the US from Libya, Iran, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. The ban prevents the issuance of visas to travelers from the six countries for 90 days and places the refugee-entry program on hold for 120 days. FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP/Getty

Prisoners incarcerated in federal prisons account for roughly 10 percent of all prisoners in the United States while the other 90 percent are held in state and local prisons and jails for being convicted of breaking state and local laws.

Undocumented immigrants convicted of an immigration offense are held in federal prison. Thus, undocumented immigrants are overrepresented in federal prison because the federal government enforces immigration laws but only a small fraction of all those incarcerated for crimes committed in the U.S. are in federal prisons.

Ms. Zimmermans claim that 12 percent of murder sentences were meted out to undocumented immigrants in 2014 shows just how misleading it is to rely on partial federal data to make a point about nationwide crime.

This U.S. Sentencing Commission lists only 75 murderers sentenced to federal prison in 2014, a mere 0.5 percent of the 14,249 nationwide murders committed that year in the United States. Of those 75 murderers, Zimmerman claimed that nine were undocumented immigrants.

The small number of murderers sentenced to federal prison are not representative of the other 99.5 percent of murders elsewhere in the same year and certainly dont prove that undocumented immigrants are more likely to be criminals.

The federal government does not convict many people for murder, kidnapping, or drug trafficking because those are primarily the purviews of state and local governments. The figures for kidnapping and drug trafficking are similarly unrepresentative because they are only for federal sentences and not those sentences to state or local incarceration.

Furthermore, it appears that Ms. Zimmerman just copied these numbers from a Breitbart blog post written by Caroline May on July 7th, 2015 despite her claim that

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.

Ms. May claims to have information that parses the U.S. Sentencing Commission by the legal status of the immigrant offender but it is not publicly available.

Regardless, Ms. May did clearly state that the U.S. Sentencing Commission data only deals with federal offenders sentenced under the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 (SRA) and does not include other categories like state cases, death penalty cases, or cases initiated but for which no convictions were obtained, offenders convicted for whom no sentences were yet issued, and offenders sentenced but for whom no sentencing documents were submitted to the Commission [emphasis added].

Ms. Zimmerman should have also included that vital detail.

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.

Ms. Zimmerman misread the GAO report in several places. First, she got the years wrong. The 55,000 figure is the number of criminal aliens incarcerated in federal prison in 2010, not 2011. The 296,000 criminal alien incarcerations in state prisons and local jails is for 2009, not 2011.

Second, Ms. Zimmerman misreported the definition of a criminal alien which she claimed were all undocumented immigrants. The GAO report claims that there were 55,000 criminal aliens in federal prison in 2010 and it defines criminal aliens as [n]oncitizens who are residing in the United States legally or illegally and are convicted of a crime.

This is an important distinction because there were about 22.5 million foreigners living in the United States in 2010 without citizenship but only about half of them were undocumented immigrants. By lumping them together, Ms. Zimmerman makes undocumented immigrants seem more crime prone and legal immigrants less crime prone.

Third, the 296,000 figure was the estimated total number of incarcerations of undocumented immigrants over the course of the entire year of 2009, not the number of undocumented immigrants incarcerated.

An example will help illustrate this point: If a criminal alien was incarcerated for 10 short sentences, released after each one, and then incarcerated after each one then that single alien would account for 10 incarcerations under the SCAAP figure.

The American Community Survey (ACS) reports the number of incarcerated immigrants at a specific time. For instance, in 2009 the ACS reported that there were 162,579 criminal non-citizen aliens incarcerated in federal, state, and local adult correctional facilities almost half of the 296,000 incarcerations under SCAAP.

Thus, the total number of people incarcerated over the course of a year is very different from the number of prisoners incarcerated at any one time. Virtually everyone reporting the number of prisoners or those incarcerated in the United States at any given time uses the ACS method of focusing on a slice of time.

The GAO reports that there were 160,348 American citizens incarcerated alongside the 54,718 criminal aliens in federal prison in 2010. The Bureau of Justice Statistics reports different figures of 179,435 American citizens incarcerated alongside 30,336 criminal aliens. Historical Bureau of Prison data is unavailable but there were about 40,000 criminal aliens incarcerated in May 2017 alongside 147,419 U.S. citizen prisoners.

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.

Ms. Zimmerman again misunderstood and misquoted these statistics. Only 56 percent of ICEs 315,943 removals in 2014 were previously convicted of a crime, not the 85 percent that she wrote. She misunderstood page seven of the 2014 ICE report on removals.

That report does state that 85 percent of all removals from the interior of the United States had previously been convicted of a crime. However, ICE only removed 102,224 people from the interior of the United States that year while the rest were removals of unlawful immigrants apprehended at the border.

Many of the previous criminal convictions were for immigration offenses and not violent and property crimes. The 2014 ICE report stated that they conducted 213,179 removals of recent border crossers. Many of those apprehended along the border had prior criminal or civil immigration violations in the United States.

An internal report compiled by the Texas Department of Public Safety 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.

That quote is maddeningly unspecific and the original report is unavailable.

Facts about the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) report come from this blog written by J. Christian Adams at PJ Media, but that sheds little light. I found a similar blurb published on the Texas DPS website that describes similar-looking statistics over different years and what the numbers actually mean.

If that blurb and the missing Texas DPS report reported statistics in the same way, then the 611,234 crimes, including nearly 3,000 homicides are actually a count of the total number of lifetime charges filed against all of the noncitizens arrested in Texas from 2008 to 2014. They are not a count of the total number of crimes committed by undocumented immigrants from 2008 to 2014.

Thus, a hypothetical non-citizen charged with a dozen different homicides but who was never actually convicted and who was arrested between 2008 and 2014 would account for 12 out of the 3000 homicide charges. Only a fraction of the charges mentioned in the blurb actually resulted in convictions which is likely the case with the unavailable Texas DPS report too.

If the Texas DPS report presented its statistics in the same way as the updated Texas DPS blurb, then non-citizens did not commit nearly 3,000 homicides from 2008 to 2014.

In 2014, non-citizens were about 10.9 percent of Texass population. From 2008 to 2014, The FBIs Uniform Crime Report (UCR) system records 8,551 murders in the state of Texas. If Ms. Zimmermans characterization of the data is correct, then non-citizens would have committed 35 percent of all homicides in the state during that time period, despite being only about 11 percent of the population which would be shocking if there was any evidence to back it up.

Ms. Zimmermans plethora of factual errors should be corrected in her Fox News piece before they further misinform the public and Capitol Hill.

Ms. Zimmerman is correct that federal and state governments do not consistently record the number of incarcerated undocumented immigrants and that should change but her numerous errors in interpreting government documents and other bloggers have compounded the harm done by poor government record keeping.

Alex Nowrasteh is the immigration policy analyst at the Cato Institutes Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity.

Read the original post:
You Know Trump's Immigrant Crime Wave? It Doesn't Exist - Newsweek

The man charged in the death of a passenger in the van he was driving was drunk and speeding last week when he lost control of the vehicle, which hit a guardrail and a bridge abutment before it rolled and caught fire, a prosecutor said Tuesday.

Nemias Garcia-Velasco, 32, has been charged with motor vehicle homicide in the death of Silvano Torres, 58. A judge set his bail at $2 million.

When he asked for a high bail amount, prosecutor Ryan Lindberg of the Douglas County Attorneys Office said Garcia-Velasco, who is from Mexico, was in the United States illegally. After the hearing, Lindberg said Garcia-Velasco had been removed from the U.S. a total of seven times five "voluntary returns" in 2005 and following two deportation hearings, in 2009 and 2011. Lindberg noted that Garcia-Velasco once was convicted of having false citizenship papers.

Carl Rusnok, a spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said "it's not unusual" for people who come to the United States illegally to return several times.

Under a voluntary return, Rusnok said, the person is saying, "'Yes, I'm in your country illegally and, yes, you can return me to (my country of origin).'"

The vast majority of voluntary returns are to Mexico, Rusnok said.

Garcia-Velasco was going over 100 mph about 1 p.m. last Wednesday when he lost control of a 2001 Dodge Ram work van as he headed west on Interstate 80 near the Interstate 680 split, Lindberg said. Garcia-Velasco told officers he had consumed 12 beers the previous evening into the morning of the crash, the prosecutor said.

Garcia-Velascos blood-alcohol level was .243 when it was checked at a hospital following the crash, Lindberg said.

Torres was riding unrestrained in the cargo area of the van and was declared dead at the scene. Front-seat passenger Jesus I. Gonzalez, 16, was treated at the hospital and released the day of the crash. Garcia-Velasco was taken to the Nebraska Medical Center with severe burns. He later was released from the hospital and booked into jail.

Rosa Flores, who had been dating Torres for about a year, said she last heard from her boyfriend just before noon last Wednesday.

Torres texted her that it was too hot to continue patching a roof, and that he would call her when he got home.

That afternoon and for two days, she kept calling and messaging him, with no answer. She saw photos of the burning van and had a sinking feeling that it was the work van Torres used.

I was just devastated, she said. There are so many unsolved things, so many questions. I was so hurt, I was so upset.

Flores said she is angry that Garcia-Velasco allegedly was drinking and driving.

If he knew that he was drinking and he knew that he wasnt able to drive, why did he? she said. He didnt stop to think about the consequences of what could happen. Its not fair that he took the life of somebody else.

Torres was a loving man who spoke fondly of his two daughters and son who lived in Mexico, Flores said. Torres had documentation to be in the United States, she said, and had lived in Omaha for about six years after working in other states. She said she does not know Garcia-Velasco.

Funeral services have not been scheduled, Flores said. Relatives are waiting to take his body back to Mexico.

More:
Illegal immigrant was drunk and speeding before deadly crash at I ... - Omaha World-Herald

In a report by the Pueblo Chieftain, sources told the local newspaper that illegal immigrants, fearful of being prosecuted and deported by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), are self-deporting primarily back to Mexico.

Sources report that some undocumented families have left the area for Mexico rather than run the risk of having a parent arrested or even sentenced to prison for immigration violations, the newspaper reported.

According to the report, families began self-deporting after a total of 14 illegal aliens in the Pueblo, Colorado area had been arrested and deported.

Many of the individuals arrested had previously come to the U.S. on an H-2A foreign guest worker visa, but overstayed and had been living in the country illegally for years.

In one case, 48-year-old Benito Rubio, who died in federal custody before he was set to be deported, was facing felony charges after illegally remaining in the U.S. despite federal orders to deport.

The self-deportation of illegal aliens comes just as Attorney General Jeff Sessions led the charge in the Trump Administration to reinstate criminal prosecution for first-time border-crossers, a break from the lax open borders policies of the Obama Administration, as Breitbart Texas reported.

Previously, first-time border-crossers were deported to their native countries. Under Trump, those illegal aliens are being prosecuted, alongside repeat offenders.

First-time border-crossers are being convicted with misdemeanors. If they illegally re-enter, they will be hit with felony charges. Under the Obama administration, former Attorney General Eric Holder actually halted all prosecutions in some border sectors.

John Binder is a reporterfor Breitbart Texas. Follow him on Twitter at@JxhnBinder.

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Illegal Aliens Self-deporting amid Stricter Enforcement, Says Report - Breitbart News

BOSTON (AP)

Europeans often hid in plain sight as Latin Americans, Asians and others living illegally in America were sent packing. But now they're starting to realize they are not immune to President Donald Trump's crackdown on illegal immigration, and they're worried.

The number of Europeans deported this federal fiscal year from the United States could surpass last fiscal year's total, according to figures provided to The Associated Press by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

From Oct. 2, 2016 through June 24, more than 1,300 Europeans have been removed, compared with 1,450 during all of federal fiscal year 2016 -- the last under President Barack Obama. The agency didn't provide estimates broken down by calendar year.

In San Jose, California, an HIV-positive Russian asylum seeker faces possible deportation after overstaying his visa. In Chicago, Polish and Irish community groups say they're seeing inquiries about immigration and citizenship-related services surge as people seek legal protections.

And in Boston, John Cunningham, a well-known Irishman who had overstayed his visa by 14 years, was sent back to Ireland last week, sending shivers through the city's sizeable Irish expat community.

"People are very, very concerned and lying low," says Ronnie Millar, of the Boston-based Irish International Immigrant Center. "The message is that if it can happen to John, it can happen to anyone."

Europeans comprise about 440,000 of the estimated 11 million people living illegally in the United States, according to the Migration Policy Institute.

Since just before Trump was elected last November, the U.S. has deported 167,350 foreigners, compared with 240,255 in all of fiscal year 2016. Immigrants from Latin America make up the most by far, with Mexico leading the way at about 93,000.

Among Europeans, Romanians make up the largest share, with 193 deportations so far in fiscal year 2017. Behind are Spain at 117; the United Kingdom at 102; Russia at 81; and Poland at 74. Those countries were also tops last fiscal year; Romania had 176, United Kingdom 160, Poland 160, Spain 115 and Russia 94.

Immigrant advocates say they've been urging individuals to know their rights if they're stopped and for parents to make arrangements for their children in the event they're detained.

"The worst aspect of these numbers from our perspective is that our community organizations do not know who is being deported and why, and are unable to send immigration attorneys to assist them," says Dmitri Daniel Glinski, president of the Russian-Speaking Community Council of Manhattan and the Bronx.

In California, San Jose resident Denis Davydov was detained for more than a month after returning from a vacation in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

He was eventually released after his lawyer argued Davydov was legally allowed to re-enter because he's currently seeking political asylum for being gay and HIV-positive. But he could be forced to return to Russia if his request is denied.

Davydov says the experience of being detained - and the uncertainty it has thrust into his asylum application - has left him feeling vulnerable.

"Before this, I thought I was a doing everything right, but I'm afraid now that doing everything right is not enough. I don't know what else I can do," he said. "I feel like it can happen again to me anywhere. In the airport or in the street."

At the Polish American Association in Chicago, executive director Magdalena Dolas said her organization has been asked to give talks about what residents should do if immigration officials show up at their doorstep.

"People are worrying about their rights," she said. "It shows there is awareness but that there is also anxiety."

The Chicago Irish Immigrant Support Center has been receiving triple the number of inquiries on immigration and legal service matters these days as it did a year ago, said Michael Collins, executive director.

There have been 18 deportations among Irish nationwide in the current fiscal year, compared with 26 in all of last fiscal year, according to the ICE data.

Cunningham's case has still become a cautionary tale among Irish expats in Boston's Irish community.

"The rumor has gone around, 'Don't go in any courthouses, and if you hear a knock on your door and you're not expecting anyone, don't answer it," said Benny Murphy, a 32-year-old bartender in Boston who had been living in this country illegally until about three years ago, when he married a woman who is a U.S. citizen.

Many believe Cunningham simply forgot the golden rule of living in the shadows: Keep your head down.

Months before his arrest, he appeared on a national news show in Ireland to share his experience of living illegally in America.

Cunningham, who declined to comment for this article through his lawyer, also wasn't squeaky clean. He had a warrant for his arrest for failing to show up in court over a $1,300 dispute with a customer of his electrical contracting business, and state records show he wasn't a licensed electrician.

Advocates complain Trump, in taking a hardline against immigration scofflaws, is sweeping up many hardworking, taxpaying people, many of whom have raised children who are now U.S. citizens.

The Obama administration, in contrast, focused immigration enforcement on the most serious criminals.

Many of those living here illegally were lulled into a "false sense of security" by the Obama years, said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors more restrictive immigration policies.

"This is a return to more traditional immigration enforcement," Vaughan said. "There needs to be some level of across-the-board, routine enforcement, in the same way your local police department doesn't focus only on murder, robbery and rape. They also have traffic patrols."

But Ali Noorani, executive director of the immigrant-rights group National Immigration Forum, argued the administration is overdoing it.

"It's pretty clear ICE is removing anyone undocumented they come across," he said. "The bigger issue is that the Trump administration is wasting really valuable law enforcement resources on many people who aren't a public safety threat, whether they're Irish, Latino, Asian or otherwise."

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Immigration crackdown leads to deportations of Europeans - KCRA Sacramento