Mediaboss Marketing

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions suggested Wednesday that Chicagos status as a so-called sanctuary city for undocumented immigrants contributes to the citys high murder total.

Last year, Chicagos 2.7 million residents experienced more murders than the 12 million people who live in New York and Los Angeles combined, Sessions said in a speech from Miami. Respect for the rule of law has broken down in Chicago. The sanctuary city policies are one sad example of that.

But a fact-check published Thursday by the Better Government Association and PolitiFact says the connection Sessions made between violent crime and city immigration policies is groundless.

Matt Dietrich, who wrote the fact-check, said there is ample evidence that Chicagos high murder total is a result of gang violence and not illegal immigration.

Dietrich spoke with WBEZs Melba Lara on Thursday about his report. Below are highlights from their conversation

Matt Dietrich: There are a lot of elements that go into this fact-check but I think the overarching one is that Jeff Sessions is trying to connect a couple of dots here that simply cannot be connected. Hes taking Chicago and using it as an example because of the number of homicides and the amount of gun violence in Chicago, and hes equating that with illegal immigrants, in other words saying that if Chicago police would get tougher on immigration that the shootings and murders would go down.

Theres ample evidence and I think police superintendent Eddie Johnson has said it repeatedly that this is a product of gang violence in the city, not illegal immigrants.

Dietrich: The research says overwhelmingly that undocumented immigrants are much less likely to commit crimes. We quote in the fact-check from one of the authors of a study on this, and he says illegal immigrants are very motivated not to blow that opportunity by getting in trouble with the police. Theyre here mostly because the want to work and they have added incentive to not break the law.

Stay up-to-date with the latest news, stories and insider events.

You've signed up to receive emails. Please check your email for a welcome confirmation.

Dietrich: What Chicago has is a directive to police officers that they are not to use immigration status as grounds for detaining someone. They are not to question people about their immigration status. The interaction that they can have with federal immigration agents is very limited, by directive. However, that same directive also has a four-point clause that says that the conditions that I just described dont apply if a suspect has an outstanding criminal warrant, if the suspect has been convicted of a felony, if the suspect is a defendant in a case in which a felony charge is pending or if the suspect has been identified as a known gang member or admits that theyre a known gang member.

So as far as having an official policy that protects what Jeff Sessions calls criminal aliens, no, thats not true.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity. Click the play button to hear the entire segment, which was produced by Patrick Smith. Web story written by Justin Bull.

Continued here:
Report: Link Between Chicago Murders And Illegal Immigration 'Groundless' - WBEZ