The logo on the back of this officer is “Fugitive Operations.” It sounds like something the Federal Marshals are tasked with. Local and state police detectives do this. The FBI does this. They solve crimes. They track down real criminals.
Real uniformed police are alert for crimes in progress. Occasionally a uniformed officer on patrol will come across a breaking and entering in progress, a drug deal, fight on the street, or be dispatched to a bar fight or a domestic assault. These are real crimes and real criminals.
The police who investigate real crimes are the state and local detectives I have known about a dozen of of them (scroll down to see why) and can tell you that they aren't armed to the teeth. They generally carry a gun and handcuffs.
I find it disgusting enough that these thugs are wearing to word POLICE in large capital letters. But a patch saying “fugitive operations” makes my blood to boil.
This is from a 2009 study. From what I have read nothing much has changed.
Collateral Damage: An Examination of ICE's Fugitive Operations Program
Preface
The U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement’s National Fugitive Operations Program (NFOP) was created in 2003 to improve national security by dispatching Field Operations Teams (FOTs) to locate and apprehend dangerous individuals with existing removal orders. In this report, the authors argue that the program is not operating in accordance with its legislative purpose, based on trends that suggest high-priority criminal fugitive aliens constitute a small and steadily declining share of total FOT arrests, while low-priority noncriminal fugitive aliens and nonfugitive ordinary status violators—whose arrest is outside the immediate scope of NFOP responsibilities—comprise the vast majority of overall apprehensions.
You can download the entire report by clicking here.
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Here’s an excerpt:
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Despite NFOP’s mandate to arrest dangerous fugitives, almost three-quarters (73 percent) of the individuals apprehended by FOTs from 2003 through February 2008 had no criminal conviction.1
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Fugitive aliens with criminal convictions have constituted a steadily decreasing share of total arrests over time. In FY 2003, fugitives with criminal convictions represented 32 percent of all FOT arrests, a figure that dropped to 17 percent in FY 2006 and 9 percent in FY 2007, the most recent year for which there is data on criminal arrests available.
How much has changed in 10 years?
The CATO Institute did a study in March of this year titled Illegal Immigrant and Crime — Assessing the Evidence.
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The article begins:
Whether illegal immigrants bring a significant amount of crime to the United States is one of the most important questions to answer in the debate over immigration policy. President Trump also seems to think so as he launched his campaign in 2015 with the now infamous quote: “[Mexican illegal immigrants] are bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” From executive orders to major talking points to the President’s speeches, which Vox reporter Dara Lind has aptly described as “immigrants are coming over the border to kill you,” Trump is interested in this important topic.
Here are a few excerpts:
- It is difficult to know whether illegal immigrants are more likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans are. All immigrants have a lower criminal incarceration rate and there are lower crime rates in the neighborhoods where they live, according to the near-unanimous findings of the peer-reviewed evidence
- Cato scholars have since published numerous Immigration Research and Policy Briefs to shed light on this topic. Michelangelo Landgrave, a doctoral student in political science at the University of California, Riverside, and I released a paper today that estimates that illegal immigrant incarceration rates are about half those of native-born Americans in 2017.
- This is about Texas which is the only state that keeps these records: But even here, illegal immigrant conviction rates are about half those of native-born Americans – without any controls for age, education, ethnicity, or any other characteristic. The illegal immigrant conviction rates for homicide, larceny, and sex crimes are also below those of native-born Americans. The criminal conviction rates for legal immigrants are the lowest of all.
- Cato scholars aren’t the only folks investigating illegal immigration and crime. Sociologists Michael Light and Ty Miller found that a higher illegal immigrant population does not increase violent crime rates. Those two researchers then teamed up with Purdue sociologist Bryan C. Kelly to look at how higher illegal immigrant populations affected drug arrests, drug overdose deaths, and DUI arrests. They found large and significantly associated reductions in drug arrests, drug overdose deaths, and DUI arrests with no significant relationship between increased illegal immigration and DUI deaths.
The study goes on with more of these finding, but the general consensus is that Donald J. Trump is lying.
This is how ICE sees itself:
Since its inception in 2003, the National Fugitive Operations Program (NFOP) has arrested more than 350,000 removable aliens.
The National Fugitive Operations Program (NFOP) provides policy direction, strategic planning, and operational oversight for ERO’s efforts to locate, arrest, and reduce the population of at-large removable aliens within the U.S. The NFOP manages budget, resource planning, and investigative support to at-large enforcement efforts within the 24 ERO field offices, including 129 Fugitive Operations Teams that prioritize enforcement efforts toward aliens who present a heightened threat to national security and public safety, such as transnational gang members, child sex offenders, and aliens with prior convictions for violent crimes. The NFOP is also responsible for ICE Probation and Parole Enforcement, the Mobile Criminal Alien Teams, and ERO’s Special Response Teams. NFOP plans and directs national enforcement operations to further national security and public safety objectives, and provides logistical and operational support to local enforcement operations.
Obviously Trump’s definition of criminal is vastly different from mine, and I am quite sure yours.