QandO

July 11, 2004

It's Not Just an Economic Issue
Posted by Dale Franks

I missed this when it came out, but Heather MacDonald has written a frightening backgrounder for the Center for Immigration Studies. It details the effects that illegal immigration has on law enforcement, especially here in Southern California. In LA, for example, at any given time 95% of homicide warrants and 60%+ of all fugitive felony warrants are targeted at illegal immigrants.

In Los Angeles, 95 percent of all outstanding warrants for homicide (which total 1,200 to 1,500) target illegal aliens. Up to two-thirds of all fugitive felony warrants (17,000) are for illegal aliens.

A confidential California Department of Justice study reported in 1995 that 60 percent of the bloody 18th Street Gang in California is illegal (estimated membership: 20,000); police officers say the proportion is undoubtedly much greater. The gang collaborates with the Mexican Mafia, the dominant force in California prisons, on complicated drug distribution schemes, extortion, and drive-by assassinations, and is responsible for an assault or robbery every day in Los Angeles County. The gang has dramatically expanded its numbers over the last two decades by recruiting recently arrived youngsters, a vast proportion
illegal, from Central America and Mexico.

The leadership of the Columbia Li’l Cycos gang, which uses murder and racketeering to control the drug market around L.A.’s MacArthur Park, was about 60 percent illegal in 2002, says former Assistant U.S. Attorney Luis Li. Frank "Pancho Villa" Martinez, a Mexican Mafia member and illegal alien, controlled the gang from prison, while serving time for felonious reentry following deportation.

Police officers in every single jurisdiction that I know of in California are prohibited from detaining illegals and turning them over to the ICE or Border patrol.

We are often prone to making economic arguments about illegal immigration, but there are, as this backgrounder points out, serious quality of life issues associated with illegal immigration.

The open borders crowd tell us that when we control immigration we have no way of knowing whether we are prohibiting a future Bill Gates from entering the country. This is absolutely true. But, it is equally true that, when immigration is uncontrolled, we have no way of preventing a future John Wayne Gacy from entering the country , either.

Or Mohammad Atta.

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