OPINION:
Half of the 165,265 arrests made by federal law enforcement agents in fiscal 2014 were for immigration-tied offenses. Sixty-one percent of the arrests made by feds this same year involved “non-U.S. citizens,” according to a new Pew Research Center study.
And the left says America doesn’t have a border problem?
Let’s peak at the numbers a bit, shall we? This is Barack Obama’s legacy — a country filled with crime-committing illegals.
The 50 percent of total federal arrests in 2014, the latest year for which the Justice Department stats were available, were due to illegal border crossings, or border smugglings. But what’s most significant is this, as Pew notes: “A decade earlier, immigration-related offense accounted for 28 percent of all federal arrests.”
The Pew statistics also show that 61 percent of the federal arrests in 2014, a total of 100,000, occurred right along the U.S.-Mexico border, in five specific districts in Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas. That’s a hike for fed arrests in that region of 21 percent over 2004.
Some hike, right? Again, thanks due — Obama.
Important to note, too, is that these statistics only look at the arrests from federal agencies, like the Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security, Interior and Treasury and so forth. They don’t include the state stats — and in 2014, nearly 99 percent of arrests were made by state and local law enforcement authorities.
So these immigrant-tied figures are drops in the bucket.
And here’s where the blood pressure really starts to rise.
“In 2014,” Pew reported, “61 percent of all federal arrests involved non-U.S. citizens, up from 43 percent in 2004. U.S. citizens, by contrast, accounted for 39 percent of all arrests in 2014, down from 57 percent a decade earlier.”
You know what that means, don’t you?
It means this, in a nutshell: President Donald Trump didn’t win the White House for nothing.
He knew what he was talking about when he grabbed a hold of the immigration problem, and campaigned upon a mantra of sealing the borders — specifically mentioning crimes that were committed by illegals as an area of crucial concern.
Most Americans have little patience for crimes from illegals, seeing the situation in black and white terms that go like this: The crime wouldn’t have been committed if the illegal hadn’t been in the country in the first place.
Only the far left disputes that logic — largely, by ignoring it. This is the same left that will undoubtedly take a look at these recent numbers from the Pew study and conclude that Obama is actually to be applauded for cracking down on the border — by overseeing the arrest of so many “non-U.S. citizens” in 2014 alone.
Let the left have its spin. For eight years, Obama opened doors wide to illegals. That federal law enforcement agents, who account for only 1 percent of the nation’s arrests, had busier work days is only a natural outgrowth of that “come on in” immigration policy of Obama’s.
Besides, as Pew notes: “Arrest figures for immigration offenses are not the same as migrant apprehensions or deportations. Apprehensions refer to cases in which foreign nationals are caught in the U.S. without authorization and can include civil as well as criminal violations. Arrests refer to cases in which individuals are booked for criminal violations of federal immigration laws … Deportations, meanwhile, refer to cases in which unauthorized immigrants are removed from the country.”
Kate Steinle, anyone?
Steinle, of course, was the murder victim of an illegal who was arrested for immigration offenses, apprehended for various felonies, and actually deported several times — yet came back to America to take advantage of one of California’s famous sanctuary city policies. Obama’s legacy.
It’s one thing for federal agents, tasked with border protection, to detain and arrest — to do their duly appointed duties. It’s another for the federal government to follow up those arrests for deportations. And under Obama, it was way more “welcome!” and sanctuary — way less deportation.
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