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Normally, the ACLU promotes transparency in government and the ability of the public to access public records. But apparently that changes when transparency might reveal damaging information that hurts their opposition to President Trumps common-sense, revised executive order temporarily suspending entry from six terrorist safe havens in the Middle East and Africa.

How else can one explain the ACLUs criticism of a little-noticed provision in the executive order that requires the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security to, among other things, report on the number and types of acts of gender-based violence against women in the U.S., like the honor killings committed by foreign nationals? That provision will also require public reporting on the number of foreign nationals charged/convicted of terrorism-related offenses or removed from the country for terrorism-related activities.

President Trump announced in his speech to Congress that the Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement office (VOICE) would help victims of crimes committed by aliens. Theres also a provision in his Jan. 25 executive order directing DHS to provide a comprehensive list of criminal actions committed by aliens on a weekly basis. Yet the Left and the media again made the claim that aliens commit less crime than native-born citizens and that the only cruel purpose of these actions is to tag immigrants as criminals.

According to a recent Associated Press article, multiple studies have concluded that immigrants are less likely to commit crime than native-born U.S. citizens. But the issue isnt non-citizens who are in this country legally, and who must abide by the law to avoid having their visas revoked or their application for citizenship refused. The real issue is the crimes committed by illegal aliens. And in that context, the claim is quite misleading, because the multiple studies on crimes committed by immigrants including a 2014 study by a professor from the University of Massachusetts, which is the only one cited in the article combine the crime rates of both citizens and non-citizens, legal and illegal.

That isnt the only problem with the study. Instead of using official crime data, it uses self-reported criminal offending and country of birth information. For obvious reasons, there is little incentive for anyone, let alone criminal aliens, to self-report delinquent and criminal involvement. When it comes to self-reporting criminal activity, some respondents will, no doubt, exaggerate. Others will flat out lie. Furthermore, many respondents will likely not disclose if they are a non-citizen out of fear of discovery and deportation.

These claims overlook disturbing actual data on crimes committed by criminal aliens. For example, the Government Accountability Office released two unsettling reports in 2005 on criminal aliens who are in prison for committing crimes in the United States, and issued an updated report in 2011.

The first report (GAO-05-337R) found that criminal aliens (both legal and illegal) make up 27 percent of all federal prisoners. Yet according to the Center for Immigration Studies, non-citizens are only about nine percent of the nations adult population. Thus, judging by the numbers in federal prisons alone, non-citizens commit federal crimes at three times the rate of citizens.

The findings in the second report (GAO-05-646R) are even more disturbing. This report looked at the criminal histories of 55,322 aliens that entered the country illegally and were still illegally in the country at the time of their incarceration in federal or state prison or local jail during fiscal year 2003. Those 55,322 illegal aliens had been arrested 459,614 times, an average of 8.3 arrests per illegal alien, and had committed almost 700,000 criminal offenses, an average of roughly 12.7 offenses per illegal alien.

Out of all of the arrests, 12 percent were for violent crimes such as murder, robbery, assault and sex-related crimes; 15 percent were for burglary, larceny, theft and property damage; 24 percent were for drug offenses; and the remaining offenses were for DUI, fraud, forgery, counterfeiting, weapons, immigration, and obstruction of justice.

The 2011 GAO report wasnt much different. It looked at 251,000 criminal aliens in federal, state, and local prisons and jails. Those aliens were arrested nearly 1.7 million times for close to three million criminal offenses. Sixty-eight percent of those in federal prison and 66 percent of those in state prisons were from Mexico. Their offenses ranged from homicide and kidnapping to drugs, burglary, and larceny.

Once again, these statistics are not fully representative of crimes committed by illegal aliens: This report only reflects the criminal histories of aliens who were in prison. If there were a way to include all crimes committed by criminal aliens, the numbers would likely be higher because prosecutors often will agree to drop criminal charges against an illegal alien if they are assured that immigration authorities will deport the alien.

The GAO reports also highlight another important flaw in the study referenced by the Associated Press. It uses survey data from a nationally representative sample of people living in the United States. Thus, the study does not take into account some potentially key factors highlighted in the GAO reports: that criminal aliens from Mexico disproportionately make up incarcerations (GAO-05-337R) and that most arrests are made in the three border states of California, Texas, and Arizona (GAO-05-646R and GAO-11-187).

One 2001 study that does take country of origin and geographic concentration factors into account found that Mexican immigrants commit between 3.5 and 5 times as many crimes as the average native. It also pointed out the large concentration of Mexican immigrants in the Southwest, which indicates that a nation-wide sample may not represent what is happening in states with a large concentration of criminal aliens.

Although there are no perfect measures of crimes committed by criminal aliens, it has certainly not been substantiated, as the Associated Press article states, that illegal aliens commit crimes at a lesser rate than either native-born or naturalized American citizens. In fact, existing data seems to show that the opposite is likely true.

But we do know one thing for sure. Every crime committed by an illegal alien is one that would not have occurred if that alien wasnt in the United States in the first place. That includes the hundreds of thousands of crimes committed by the 55,322 illegal aliens in the GAO study who victimized countless numbers of Americans.

So despite the criticism from the ACLU and others, requiring the federal government to keep track of and regularly report on the victimization of Americans by illegal aliens is not only a good idea, it is something that the American people should demand.

Hans A. von Spakovsky is a Senior Legal Fellow and Grant Strobl is a member of the Young Leaders Program at The Heritage Foundation. Along with John Fund, von Spakovsky is the coauthor of Whos Counting? How Fraudsters and Bureaucrats Put Your Vote at Risk and Obamas Enforcer: Eric Holders Justice Department.

Read more here:
What the media won't tell you about illegal immigration and criminal ... - Conservative Review

LOUISBURG, N.C. An 18-year-old man accused of decapitating his mother promised an emergency dispatcher that he wouldn't kill two young siblings heard wailing in the background of his 911 call, according to a recording released Thursday.

The suspect, who called 911 not long after the killing Monday afternoon, calmly gave answers throughout the nearly 17-minute recording -- with responses ranging from his location to the names of his 4-year-old sister and 2-year-old brother who were in the house. He said his father was away and recited the man's name and cell phone number in an even tone. The dispatcher asked repeatedly about the children.

"I'm not going to kill them; don't worry," the suspect responded.

The siblings were found unharmed when deputies arrived Monday at the house in Zebulon, about 30 miles east of Raleigh. Court documents said the first deputy on the scene saw the suspect walk out of the house carrying a knife in one hand and his mother's severed head in the other.

'DREAMER' DANIELA VARGAS RELEASED FROM DETENTION CENTER, LAWYERS SAY

The emergency call began with the suspect saying he killed someone and the dispatcher asking him why.

"Why did you kill somebody?" the dispatcher says.

"Because I felt like it," the suspect answers.

Later, the dispatcher later asked if the mother had made him mad: "What was she doing? Did she make you mad, or what happened?"

The suspect responds: "Yes, she made me mad."

The recording offered chilling details of the aftermath of the killing by the suspect described by his defense attorney as mentally disturbed. As they trade questions and answers, the dispatcher sounds unnerved at times. When he says he stabbed his mother eight times, the dispatcher responds: "Oh, mercy."

The exact spelling of the suspect's name was unclear. Local court records listed him as Oliver Funes Machada; federal records as Oliver Funes Machado. He is charged with first-degree murder.

The mother's name, according to local authorities who received the information from a 14-year-old son, is Yesenia Beatriz Funez Machado, 35.

The suspect was from Honduras and in the U.S. illegally, said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman Bryan Cox.

The prosecutor said officials were seeking a mental evaluation of the suspect, and that his apparent mental issues could delay uncovering a motive for weeks or months. The warrants say he was on four medications for a psychiatric condition, but don't elaborate.

His public defender, attorney C. Boyd Sturges III, has said he spoke to the man and that he is profoundly mentally disturbed.

The suspect's next court appearance is scheduled for Tuesday.

Original post:
Illegal immigrant accused of beheading his mom gives chilling 911 call - Fox News

When you think of illegal immigration in the U.S., do you picture a border crosser or a visa overstayer? A family or a single person? A farmworker or a waiter?

People living in the U.S. without legal status are frequently invoked in American politics especially in recent months. But the conversation is often short on facts about the millions of people who fall into this category.

There are, however, outdated beliefs: A Pew Research Center survey in 2015 found that very few Americans are aware of recent changes in immigration patterns.

And, of course, there are stereotypes, which often don't always match up with reality. Most people in the U.S. illegally have been here for years, for instance, and people working service jobs far outnumber migrant farm labor.

Here's a look at the actual statistics about people living in the U.S. illegally.

We should note that there are a few caveats about this data. Different research groups use different methodologies, and in some cases, they rely on estimates. We've included links to all our data sources so you can read about their methods in more detail.

There are far more naturalized citizens than unauthorized immigrants in the U.S., and slightly more green card holders, according to the Pew Research Center.

The total number of people living in the country illegally about 11 million has made headlines recently, because immigration advocates suggest that under the Trump administration's immigration enforcement policies, almost all of them could be targeted for deportation. (More than 700,000 "DREAMers" immigrants who were brought into the U.S. illegally or overstayed their visas as children are still temporarily protected from deportation through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program.)

A large majority of those people currently living in the U.S. illegally have been here for a decade or longer, which is a major shift from the situation at the turn of the millennium.

About two-thirds of unauthorized immigrants have lived in the U.S. for 10 years or more, Pew says. Only 14 percent arrived within the past five years.

In the late 1990s, the number of new arrivals was far higher, and the share of longtime residents far lower.

Mexico is "the leading nation of origin for U.S. unauthorized immigrants," Pew writes, but the share of immigrants from Mexico is also declining.

That is to say, Mexican immigrants are a shrinking majority of the population living in the country through illegal immigration.

Of people living in the U.S. illegally, more than half are from Mexico. The population from that one country far outnumbers the population from entire continents. But there are fewer people of Mexican origin living in the U.S. now than there were a decade ago.

You can see the trend lines clearly if you look just at people arriving in the U.S. illegally, instead of the millions who live here. The percentage arriving from Mexico has dropped markedly, while more immigrants are coming from Africa, Central America and Asia.

The reasons for the shifting immigration patterns are complex. For Central American immigrants, conflicts in their home countries certainly play a role. The Migration Policy Institute suggests that there might be similar reasons for increased migration from Asia and Africa.

"As European countries have tightened migration restrictions after record inflows of asylum seekers and migrants in 2015, some Africans and Asians fleeing conflict and poverty appear to be flying to Latin American countries with relatively lenient visa policies, such as Ecuador, Brazil, and Cuba, then turning to established regional migration networks," the Migration Policy Institute writes.

The Department of Homeland Security has estimated that as of Jan. 4, 2016, about 416,500 people overstayed their visas in fiscal year 2015. That's less than 1 percent of visa holders who entered the U.S. during that period.

Still, it's unclear how many visa overstayers make up the total number of unauthorized immigrants. A Pew estimate from 2006 says it could be as high as 45 percent. A recent study by the Center for Migration Studies estimates that two-thirds of those who joined the unauthorized immigrant population in 2014 were visa overstayers.

Why's it so hard to nail down the details? In part, it's because the data released last year are the first numbers on visa overstays that the government has released in more than two decades.

Federal law requires the Department of Homeland Security to report how many people come into the U.S. and stay after their visas expire. But the government has been having trouble collecting that data for years, as a study by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found.

The way airports and other ports of entry are currently set up makes it difficult to keep track of when a traveler leaves the U.S. The department has been piloting new programs to identify airport travelers by scanning their faces and irises.

Without historical data, it's hard to measure trends. But the estimates for fiscal year 2015 do show that Canadians made up the majority of visa overstays.

If you're a person living in the U.S. illegally, odds are you can be found in one of a few big cities and their surrounding suburbs.

Sixty-one percent of this population lives in 20 metropolitan areas, such as New York, Los Angeles and Houston, Pew reports. That's very different from the stats for the U.S. as a whole just 36 percent of the overall population live in those areas.

But "metropolitan" doesn't mean "urban," and most people living there illegally reside in the suburbs instead of the city proper. (The only exception to that rule is Phoenix.)

That can pose a challenge for city governments that want to take a stand on immigration issues, as NPR's Richard Gonzalez reported last month:

"Many big city mayors have promised to resist President Trump's threat to cut off federal funds to sanctuary cities. But the fact that most of the unauthorized immigrants live outside of city limits might complicate a mayor's ability to protect them, according to William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution.

"He told the Chicago Tribune, 'This may raise questions of whether or not the sanctuary status is an umbrella one that covers the whole region.' "

You probably know that people living in the U.S. without legal status, as well as other immigrants, are a big part of the farm labor force.

That's why the farm industry and farmworkers have been keenly concerned about Trump's rhetoric and policies on immigration.

But there just aren't very many farming jobs in the U.S., overall. So farming is not a common industry for the 11 million only 4 percent of people living here illegally work in agriculture.

Far, far more work in service jobs or in construction.

According to the Migration Policy Institute, one-third of people who are age 15 or older and staying in the U.S. without authorization live with at least one child under the age of 18 who is a U.S. citizen. That's far more than the number who live only with noncitizen children that's just 6 percent of the population.

Jennifer Van Hook, a demographer at Penn State University who studies immigration, points out that this statistic shows that deportations affect more than just unauthorized immigrants.

"When these people leave the country, who's going to take care of their children? It's likely that some of those U.S.-born children will be accompanying their parents," she says.

Former President Barack Obama's attempt to temporarily shield these parents of U.S. citizens from deportation through Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents also known as DAPA has never been implemented, and the future of the effort is unclear.

Continue reading here:
How America's Idea Of Illegal Immigration Doesn't Always Match Reality - NPR

An extended family of eight from Colombia speak with Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers after they illegally crossed the U.S.-Canada border near Hemmingford Quebec.

All sorts of reasons have been trotted out to explain why U.S. productivity growth has slowed so markedly, from mismeasurement to stalling innovation to weak capital investment.

Oxford Economics has a new research note adding another theory: unauthorized workers.

They say that up to 15% of the 2 percentage point slowdown in productivity growth can be attributed to illegal immigration.

Also read: U.S. productivity still worst in five years despite better showing from manufacturing

By their numbers, which rely on data from the Labor Department and a survey from Pew Research, there are just over 11 million illegal immigrants in the U.S., of which 8 million are in the workforce, or 5% of the total U.S. workforce.

They then adjusted the productivity growth numbers for a larger workforce.

The research note does point out that theyre assuming illegal immigrants arent captured in official employment statistics. Thats not necessarily the case the Bureau of Labor Statistics acknowledges the household survey does include some illegal immigrants, so the question is the degree to which it does.

Furthermore, the Pew data suggest the number of illegal immigrants in the labor force has stabilized in recent years. And yet, the productivity slowdown has been more notable recently. Which means that even if Oxford Economics is right, there have to be other factors in play for why productivity growth has slowed.

Read more here:
A new theory for the productivity slowdown illegal immigrants - MarketWatch

When you think of illegal immigration in the U.S., do you picture a border crosser or a visa overstayer? A family or a single person? A farmworker or a waiter?

People living in the U.S. without legal status are frequently invoked in American politics especially in recent months. But the conversation is often short on facts about the millions of people who fall into this category.

There are, however, outdated beliefs: A Pew Research Center survey in 2015 found that very few Americans are aware of recent changes in immigration patterns.

And, of course, there are stereotypes, which often don't always match up with reality. Most people in the U.S. illegally have been here for years, for instance, and people working service jobs far outnumber migrant farm labor.

Here's a look at the actual statistics about people living in the U.S. illegally.

We should note that there are a few caveats about this data. Different research groups use different methodologies, and in some cases, they rely on estimates. We've included links to all our data sources so you can read about their methods in more detail.

There are far more naturalized citizens than unauthorized immigrants in the U.S., and slightly more green card holders, according to the Pew Research Center.

The total number of people living in the country illegally about 11 million has made headlines recently, because immigration advocates suggest that under the Trump administration's immigration enforcement policies, almost all of them could be targeted for deportation. (More than 700,000 "DREAMers" immigrants who were brought into the U.S. illegally or overstayed their visas as children are still temporarily protected from deportation through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program.)

A large majority of those people currently living in the U.S. illegally have been here for a decade or longer, which is a major shift from the situation at the turn of the millennium.

About two-thirds of unauthorized immigrants have lived in the U.S. for 10 years or more, Pew says. Only 14 percent arrived within the past five years.

In the late 1990s, the number of new arrivals was far higher, and the share of longtime residents far lower.

Mexico is "the leading nation of origin for U.S. unauthorized immigrants," Pew writes, but the share of immigrants from Mexico is also declining.

That is to say, Mexican immigrants are a shrinking majority of the population living in the country through illegal immigration.

Of people living in the U.S. illegally, more than half are from Mexico. The population from that one country far outnumbers the population from entire continents. But there are fewer people of Mexican origin living in the U.S. now than there were a decade ago.

You can see the trend lines clearly if you look just at people arriving in the U.S. illegally, instead of the millions who live here. The percentage arriving from Mexico has dropped markedly, while more immigrants are coming from Africa, Central America and Asia.

The reasons for the shifting immigration patterns are complex. For Central American immigrants, conflicts in their home countries certainly play a role. The Migration Policy Institute suggests that there might be similar reasons for increased migration from Asia and Africa.

"As European countries have tightened migration restrictions after record inflows of asylum seekers and migrants in 2015, some Africans and Asians fleeing conflict and poverty appear to be flying to Latin American countries with relatively lenient visa policies, such as Ecuador, Brazil, and Cuba, then turning to established regional migration networks," the Migration Policy Institute writes.

The Department of Homeland Security has estimated that as of Jan. 4, 2016, about 416,500 people overstayed their visas in fiscal year 2015. That's less than 1 percent of visa holders who entered the U.S. during that period.

Still, it's unclear how many visa overstayers make up the total number of unauthorized immigrants. A Pew estimate from 2006 says it could be as high as 45 percent. A recent study by the Center for Migration Studies estimates that two-thirds of those who joined the unauthorized immigrant population in 2014 were visa overstayers.

Why's it so hard to nail down the details? In part, it's because the data released last year are the first numbers on visa overstays that the government has released in more than two decades.

Federal law requires the Department of Homeland Security to report how many people come into the U.S. and stay after their visas expire. But the government has been having trouble collecting that data for years, as a study by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found.

The way airports and other ports of entry are currently set up makes it difficult to keep track of when a traveler leaves the U.S. The department has been piloting new programs to identify airport travelers by scanning their faces and irises.

Without historical data, it's hard to measure trends. But the estimates for fiscal year 2015 do show that Canadians made up the majority of visa overstays.

If you're a person living in the U.S. illegally, odds are you can be found in one of a few big cities and their surrounding suburbs.

Sixty-one percent of this population lives in 20 metropolitan areas, such as New York, Los Angeles and Houston, Pew reports. That's very different from the stats for the U.S. as a whole just 36 percent of the overall population live in those areas.

But "metropolitan" doesn't mean "urban," and most people living there illegally reside in the suburbs instead of the city proper. (The only exception to that rule is Phoenix.)

That can pose a challenge for city governments that want to take a stand on immigration issues, as NPR's Richard Gonzalez reported last month:

"Many big city mayors have promised to resist President Trump's threat to cut off federal funds to sanctuary cities. But the fact that most of the unauthorized immigrants live outside of city limits might complicate a mayor's ability to protect them, according to William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution.

"He told the Chicago Tribune, 'This may raise questions of whether or not the sanctuary status is an umbrella one that covers the whole region.' "

You probably know that people living in the U.S. without legal status, as well as other immigrants, are a big part of the farm labor force.

That's why the farm industry and farmworkers have been keenly concerned about Trump's rhetoric and policies on immigration.

But there just aren't very many farming jobs in the U.S., overall. So farming is not a common industry for the 11 million -- only 4 percent of people living here illegally work in agriculture.

Far, far more work in service jobs or in construction.

According to the Migration Policy Institute, one-third of people who are age 15 or older and staying in the U.S. without authorization live with at least one child under the age of 18 who is a U.S. citizen. That's far more than the number who live only with noncitizen children that's just 6 percent of the population.

Jennifer Van Hook, a demographer at Penn State University who studies immigration, points out that this statistic shows that deportations affect more than just unauthorized immigrants.

"When these people leave the country, who's going to take care of their children? It's likely that some of those U.S.-born children will be accompanying their parents," she says.

Former President Barack Obama's attempt to temporarily shield these parents of U.S. citizens from deportation through Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents also known as DAPA has never been implemented, and the future of the effort is unclear.

Read more:
How America's idea of illegal immigration doesn't always match reality - Minnesota Public Radio News