During a House subcommittee hearing this week trying to justify why in the world ICE needs a $1.2 billion increase when American taxpayers already spend $20 billion on federal immigration enforcement, the agency’s acting director warned undocumented immigrant moms and dads that they “need to be worried” about getting torn from their families, homes, and communities, even if they have no criminal record:
The Trump administration will continue arresting undocumented immigrants who haven’t been convicted of crimes and won’t apologize for it, the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement said Tuesday.
“If you’re in this country illegally and you committed a crime by entering this country, you should be uncomfortable,” Acting Director Thomas Homan told the House Appropriations Committee’s Homeland Security Subcommittee. “You should look over your shoulder, and you need to be worried.”
Trump has spent his presidency claiming he’d target only “bad hombres” while refusing to acknowledge his deportation force is doing the exact opposite, arresting undocumented moms like Maribel, who was deported despite having four U.S. citizen kids and no criminal record. Now his agency’s director appears to be acknowledging he’s full of shit.
And, it was only this past January when Paul Ryan told a Dreamer who was terrified that she would be swept up in an immigration raid that “if you’re worried about some deportation force knocking on your door this year … don’t worry about that.” Maybe time to update that comment, Mr. Speaker.
Homan defended rounding up otherwise law-abiding undocumented immigrant moms and dads by basically stating the government is being efficient because brown people just turn out to be criminals anyway.
Weird, because if undocumented immigrants were indeed predisposed to criminality, they’d be working for Homan’s big boss instead:
“Most of the criminal aliens we find in the interior of the United States, they entered as a non-criminal,” Homan said. “If we wait for them to violate yet another law against a citizen of this country, then it’s too late. We shouldn’t wait for them to become a criminal.”
But the facts are clear: numerous studies have shown that immigrants not only commit less crimes than native-born Americans, but higher levels of immigration actually equal safer neighborhoods:
Research has shown virtually no support for the enduring assumption that increases in immigration are associated with increases in crime.
Immigration-crime research over the past 20 years has widely corroborated the conclusions of a number of early 20th-century presidential commisions that found no backing for the immigration-crime connection. Although there are always individual exceptions, the literature demonstrates that immigrants commit fewer crimes, on average, than native-born Americans.
Also, large cities with substantial immigrant populations have lower crime rates, on average, than those with minimal immigrant populations.
“Homan’s statement that ‘we shouldn’t wait for them to become a criminal’ makes a breathtaking assumption,” said immigrant rights leader Frank Sharry, “that ‘they’ are all latent criminals, and it is only a matter of time before they act out.”
