The Costs of Porous Borders

The disastrous border policies of the Obama Administration are becoming more apparent as arrests of criminal aliens are making the news.

Thirteen DREAMers from El Salvador stand accused of seven murders, including beating to death two Long Island girls with a baseball bat.

In Houston, two more DREAMers from El Salvador face charges of kidnapping one girl and murdering another girl in a Satanic ritual in their apartment.

They are members of MS-13, a gang that runs drugs and mayhem in America thanks to decades of open borders policies by both Presidents Bush as well as Clinton and Obama.

While Congress never passed the DREAM Act, it is de facto law as the Washington Establishment has prevented the border patrol from going after minors or illegal aliens brought here as minors.

Indeed, President Obama adopted the law in an executive order, relabeling it DACA.

Story here.

As of January, 2017, the US Bureau of Prisons reports the following breakdown of federal inmates per nation of origin:
Country                          # of Inmates         % of Inmates
Colombia                             1,681                  0.9%
Cuba                                    1,242                   0.7%
Dominican Republic           1,661                   0.9%
Mexico                               26,852                 14.2%
Other/Unknown                    9,572                   5.1%
United States                   147,769                  78.3%

As of January, 2017, there were 154,000 inmates housed in federal prison facilities and another 35,100 housed in private and other facilities.

For more information see the March 2011 CRIMINAL ALIEN STATISTICS, Information on Incarcerations, Arrests, and Costs report by the US Government Accountability Office. It's dated but still interesting and shows that in 2010:

• About 25 percent of the federal prison population in 2010 was comprised of foreign nationals. They numbered 55,000. Their numbers are growing, although slightly more slowly than the overall federal prison population.
• State and local correctional systems that applied for payments under the federal SCAAP (State Criminal Alien Assistance Program) program in 2009 reported 296,000 illegal aliens who were jailed at least four days for a felony or two misdemeanors.
• The average incarcerated alien had seven arrests, and committed an average of 12 offenses.
• Twenty-five percent of the aliens had 16 or more offenses. Nine percent had just one arrest.

Under 42 U.S. Code § 13710 - Payments to eligible States for incarceration of criminal aliens - the federal government reimburses the states for costs associated with housing criminal aliens. However, this funding only accounts for approximately 8% or less of the estimated $2 billion spent annually by the states for this purpose ($1.87 billion in 2014).

As illegal aliens are more likely to commit crimes than any other type of immigrant or citizen, these costs are increasing every year and may account for the release of thousands of criminal aliens in order to reduce state budget overruns.

How much more likely to commit crimes? That's a dicey question as the states and federal governments do not make the answer easy. The overwhelming majority of crimes are handled by the states, not the feds, so the answer must be extrapolated from various sources.

Let’s take homicide as an example. The GAO estimates “criminal aliens” were arrested, convicted and incarcerated for 25,064 homicides. If non-citizens committed them over seven years, the annual rate would be 14.2 per 100,000 non-citizens. If illegal aliens committed them over four years, the annual rate would be 58.0 per 100,000 illegal aliens. Either way you compute, those are high rates.

By comparison, the FBI reports the murder rates for the entire U.S. from 2003 through 2009 varied from 5.0 to 5.8 per 100,000 inhabitants for an average rate of 5.5. To be clear, 5.5 is much lower than either 14.2 or 58.0.

Or look at the total number of homicides in those years. Per the FBI, there were 67,642 murders in the U.S. from 2005 through 2008, and 115,717 from 2003 through 2009. Per the GAO, criminal aliens committed 25,064 of them. That means they committed 22% to 37% of all murders in the U.S., while being only 3.52% to 8.25% of the population.

Conclusion: criminal and illegal aliens commit murder at much higher rates than all inhabitants of the U.S. – at least 3 to 10 times higher. [emphasis mine ~ sig94]