The Face of Mara Salvatrucha or MS13
San Diego, CA ---In the wake of the murder of Border Patrol Agent and father of two Robert Rosas, the issue of illegal immigration and its impact on all of us is again top of mind. The illegal border crosser is often described by the media as a poor migrant worker, that is just looking for a job and a way to support their families. In some cases that is true however almost daily we hear of unthinkable crimes being committed by people who aren’t supposed to be here in the first place.
Is Illegal Immigration a victimless crime? Not hardly. The men that allegedly murdered Agent Rosas weren’t hard-core cartel members but illegal aliens trying to cross into the US undetected. Yet some illegal immigrants themselves are victims.
This is the first of a four part series on the victims of illegal immigration. In Part II, I will highlight the dangers faced by those seeking a better life in the US as many are raped, robbed, tortured and left for dead by unscrupulous “coyote” guides. In Part III, I will address the impact on the American worker and the economic crisis it has contributed to in California and elsewhere. In Part IV, I will address the crimes committed against American citizens. Crimes like murder and dismemberment, which have left a trail of injured and dead Americans of all ages nationwide.
First, this is not an attempt to demonize any ethnic group. People cross the US border illegally from every country on the globe and for any conceivable reason. This is not a racial issue though some will attempt to play that card, as perhaps it is the only one in their hand. It is not a new phenomenon either. The illegal immigrants of the mid to late eighteen hundreds were largely Irish and Chinese coming here to work on the railroads. The government was as complicit in their illegal entry then as it is today.
On this day however we are reminded tragically of just how dangerous the border area has become. In a 2006 study conducted by the Border Counties Coalition, the twenty-four US counties that run along the border with Mexico were combined into a fictional 51st State and compared against the other fifty. Not surprisingly they collectively ranked #1 n crime, crimes involving drugs, crimes involving children, Federal crimes and lastly, immigration crimes. Additionally these same counties had the nations highest incidence of Tuberculosis, Leprosy and Chagas disease. This suggests with empirical data that you don’t have to be the victim of a crime to be negatively impacted as most, if not all of the cases of these once eradicated diseases in this country can be traced to people illegally entering without proper health screens.
At one point in 2006 it was estimated that as many as 15,000+ illegal aliens were crossing into the US each day. Roughly twenty-percent were criminals. We know this because they had already been deported for felonies in the United States. In fact according to the Center For Immigration Studies, a large percentage of felons in state and federal prison are illegally in this country costing the taxpayer upwards of $1.6 billion dollars per year. Statistics though are pliable and can be bent or “spun” to accommodate most any position. The open borders activists will of course cite another report published by the Immigration Policy Center in which they assert that statistically immigrants, whether illegal or legal, were substantially less likely to commit crimes or be incarcerated than native born US citizens. Still, the fact remains that whether likely or unlikely to commit crimes, a good percentage of all criminals in prison are illegal aliens.
Routinely, Border Patrol Agents arrest illegal border crossers with gang affiliations like MS-13; their colors displayed proudly in the form of facial and body tattoos. Backpacks and clothing with gang symbols are found in remote desert areas across the southwest having been discarded after their owners were picked up by their sponsors and driven to major urban areas around the country.
The alleged killers of Border Agent Rosas were reportedly part of a people smuggling operation working out of Tecate, Mexico. One of the six men charged, Jose Eugenio Quintero Ruiz, was wanted for two murders and rape in the United States. Somehow, at least one of the 26 people involved in the Rosas shooting made it all the way to San Jose before his cell phone betrayed his location and he was arrested. The network of people smugglers in both the US and Mexico is wide and varied in their funding and sophistication.
In the next article I will address crimes against the illegal immigrants themselves by men and women on both sides of the border who will do almost anything, to anyone, for a buck or a peso. For many, the illegal immigrants dream of traveling to El Norte and living the good life is abruptly and tragically cut short. Most of this could be avoided, if only the governments of the United States and Mexico made illegal immigration and secure borders, a priority.
Comments
Janet is likely on the speed dial to complain and get relief if caught committing crimes. Obama and Janet are pro illegalls so they must be pro rape, pro murder, pro stealing. You can't separate out people and deeds as if they aren't related.
I recognise the Chap in the picture. Met Him and 5 of His "Home Boys" on a very hot day in Jewell Valley by the Red Gate. They were very cooperative. Of Course, they were also very dehydrated and on the verge of Heat Stroke. 3 could not get up and the other 3 were too weak to help them. B.P. had them transported to the Hospital. B.P. informed Me that all 6 were convicted Felons and had just been released from Our Prison 2 days prior and transported to the Border. I guess that they were just coming back to do work that Americans won't do. Like Robbery, Murder, Rape, etc.
The 20 percent criminal element of those entering this country illegally is never addressed by the media. These are people whose sole purpose is to engage in criminal activity; hurt people and destroy America.
How many more Border Agents have to die, how many more Americans have to die at the hands of these ILLEGAL ALIENS before enough is enough?
ILLEGAL ALIENS are destroying this Country and States like Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, New York and other States are pandering to these CRIMINIALS! Why? Cheap labor?
I for one, am sick and tired of these ILLEGAL ALIENS snubbing their nose at our immigration laws and the many other laws of this Country. If our Federal Government can not ENFORCE our immigration laws, and get these ILLEGAL ALIENS out of this Country, then let the States do it! One way or another, an end has to come to this illegal immigration.
It's time for ZERO TOLERENCE with these ILLEGAL ALIENS. It's time for them get out of this Country and back in their own Country where they belong. When we get rid of the ILLEGAL ALIENS, we will get rid of all the problems that go with them.
American citizens killed by illegal aliens!
www.ojjpac.org/memorial.asp
www.immigrationshumancost.org/
what would happen if twenty million illegals left our country?
www.redcounty.com/what-if-20-million-unlawful-immigrants-vacated-america#comment-12435
Mexico's second highest income is from illegals sending money home! google it! do you understand how really HUGE that is?? how many of them MUST be here illegally to make that happen?? 12 million? HA! more like 40 million?? whos job it is to protect and defend the United States?? to ABIDE by the CONSTITUTION???? what does it mean? to break the law? why all the infighting? they broke the LAW! period! google "operation w*tback" Eisenhower had this very same problem. he quietly and EFFECTIVLY took care of it! why can we not do the same??? they walked, rode, swam over here. they can do the same going home taking their anchor babies with the
"In fact according to the Center For Immigration Studies, 29% of felons in state and federal prison are illegally in this country costing the taxpayer upwards of $1.6 billion dollars per year."
Sorry, but if you're going to use this oft-repeated but statistically impossible claim, you lose all credibility on the issue.
Try the Department of Justice statistics on prisons and you'll see that this stat is ridiculous.
What the pro-amnesty crowd doesn't seem to want to understand is that these issues are all intertwined; illegal immigrant smuggling, human trafficking, drug and weapons trafficking. The criminals who are involved in one, are usually involved in others. Smuggled aliens can have information which will assist law enforcement and often times the only way to get this information is to arrest llegals who haven’t themselves committed the crimes.
Rod, the statistic comes from the Congressional Record. It is actually 29.4 % in one citing and 26.9% in another. Different years. The DOJ info you referred me to does not have a category for illegal aliens. If you can find it please post it here and I will gladly review it. Thanks for reading and thanks for your comments.
Carl, please cite exactly where in the Congressional Record - and which Congress-critter said such balderdash.
Assuming the overwhelming majority of illegals in prison/jail are Hispanic - a reasonable assumption - that figure is impossible.
According to the DOJ publication (www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/pim08st.pdf), as of June 30, 2008 (most recent data, new one should be out soon), there were 460,400 Hispanic males and females in federal and state prisons and local jails.
Total prison/jail population was 2,311,200 -which means the TOTAL Hispanic population was only 19.9 percent.
Even if EVERY Hispanic was illegal, you're still 10 percentage points short.
I've chased this statistic for a couple years now, and never found a source using actual verifiable data - someone pulled the number out of their rectum.
Carl, get your facts straight. Chagas disease is not a nasty skin disorder. In fact, it is not a skin disorder at all - it affects the heart and/or gastrointesinal tract. And TB has never been eradicated. Your "empirical data" is questionable at best.
The most hardworking illegal alien that you can find has, by overstaying a visa or stealing across our border, disrespected our laws and dishonored himself/herself. The dishonor and disrespect continues when stolen and/or forged documents are used to obtain jobs, licenses or benefits. The damage builds from here into our quality of life. Our poorest, hardest working Americans and legal immigrants are driven into poverty by the competition from lawbreaking illegal aliens and the greedy criminal employers that hire them. Our elected leaders appear willing to accept the pain and suffering caused by illegal aliens as some kind of collateral damage Americans are expected to silently accept for the sake of special interests in the U.S. The 1986 amnesty was a total failure! Never again!
"Still, the fact remains that whether likely or unlikely to commit crimes, nearly one-third of all criminals in prison are illegal aliens."
The "nearly one-third" above is hogwash. It's based on false claims made in 2005 by Rep. Steve King (R-IA) that were in turn based on King's wildly inaccurate "28%" reading of a GAO report and his unfounded and illogical "extrapolation" of those inaccurately read numbers. King's numbers are exaggerated from the truth by a multiple of at least 7.
Jim, Rod, If you have documentation to prove otherwise please send it me by email. IN the meantime I have removed the stats until I can get more than one source of corroboration. They will then be re-inserted into the article.
Catee, Thank you for your post. You are correct on Chagas disease. I misread the definition. It is a nasty parasitic disorder. On TB I will refer you back to the Center for Disease Control where I quote: "Multi-drug Resistant Tuberculosis, once eradicated in the US, now infects approximately 13,000 persons in this country each year."
And according to the National Institute of Health: Incidents of Leprosy, now known as Hansen’s disease, have doubled in the US since 2000. In the 40 years prior there were only 900 cases of Leprosy in the entire United States or about 22 per year. Between 2002 and 2005 that number went to 7,000 (2300+ per year) with most of the infected coming from Latin America.
Chagas disease, a nasty parasitic disorder almost exclusively found in Latin America, was virtually unknown in the US before 2000. Since then more than 500,000 people in the US have become infected with the disease and largely from people entering the US without proper health screens.
The most likely "origin" for the skewed statistic is a GAO report from 2005 (GAO-05-337R), which found that the FEDERAL prison population had been holding steady at about 27 percent illegal immigrants.
Two things to keep in mind: 1.) federal prisoners make up a small fraction of the total prisoner population (consistently less than 10 percent) and 2.) virtually all illegals being held for deportation go into the federal prison system, skewing the federal number higher.
That same report found that California had about 40 percent of the illegals being held in state prisons, by far the biggest number. (Texas was second, with 15 percent.)
Now factor in that the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation put out a report in late 2006 or early 2007 that found 11 percent of California's prisoners were illegals. (If you can find that report on their web site, you're better than me - but several state assemblymen have referenced it.)
No way it's 27, 29 percent overall.
Rod, good info. I'll research it. Thanks. Your premise seems logical and as the article stated: "Statistics though are pliable and can be bent or “spun” to accommodate most any position." It seems likely that the FEDERAL number was "SPUN" into an overall number. There are numerous questionable reports on the web like the INS/FBI report everyone refers to but can't seem to find the actual report. Thanks again for your comments and insight.
NO crime is victimless--including illegal immigration!
Carl, most folks want to cling to those stats, regardless - which pretty much makes it impossible to have a rational discussion about the very real issues around immigration. Glad to see you're not one of them.
Personally, I think closing borders if a futile effort until we do something about the overpowering economic incentive most illegals have to come here. We're NOT going to create the kind of border that existed between East and West Germany - and even that didn't stop people from getting through.
Start with a realistic guest worker program, with realistic controls, combine it with a workable employer check program - and the illegal side should decrease to a more manageable level.
Carl, Rod was telling you somethig valuable about that GAO report. Do the numbers yourself and you'll find you can't duplicate the results. There has been multipling when there should have been addition.
As to CIS, if their figures are not high enough to prove your point, ask them to make them higher. It's sham work done to produce a conclusion already decided upon. Their sister organizations also function in this manner.
Big surprise that the murder of a border patrol agent is being seized on to frame the whole U.S.-Mexico debate, the punchline being that we're being invaded by the Huns. Sorry, Mexicans aren't Huns.
Why not try my new paradigm, which is not what to do about pesky "illegal immigrants" from our long discriminated against southern neighbor Mexico, but how and when we embrace Mexico as a "51st state" of the U.S., making all Mexicans legal U.S. citizens in exchange for adding their 760K sq. mi. of territory to the U.S. along with its 5.8K mi. of coastlines, and making them adopt our U.S. Constitution. Google "Megamerge Dissolution Solution" to read my proposal, which is too hot for the major media to touch apparently.
These illegal aliens are a big threat to America as big as Islam terror groups .They have no respect for our country they sneak in the USA and are a serious danger they all deserve to be arrested and deported and if they sneak back in they should be shot.Liberal politicians and judges are jerks to give them any aid.Right wing conservatives must get back the power and get rid of these creeps.We may have another civil war in the USA Im very very serious.The future of our nation is at risk
Ihope Gov Jan Brewer run for President she is the only one that will help USA about the illegal immigrants they get every thing free yes we pay it all well the President want the illegal immigrant for Vote he don't care about usa they are coming over the wall The Gov. & the President see all this they don't care . . what happen just so they get Vote & the Illegal immigrants say this we are american no way in hell. & as for Social Security they cut our for 2 year & they get it to them illegal immigrants . the usa work Just as hard as you do & more
& as for the girl that come over to have a baby & want it be citizen ship no way go back home & have it This is American & we will Stand By Gov Jan all the way NYC is full with them I know
Good Luck Gov Jan Brewer
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