Study Finds Half Of US Crime On the Southern Border. Another Success For Obama?

Lawlessness At The Border Taking Inevitable Toll On U.S. Crime

August 7, 2014 by Sam Rolley 

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Immigration-related lawlessness along the U.S.’s southern border has caused crime rates in the region to rise. The trend is expected to continue— and some observers believe a Nationwide immigration-related crime wave will result.

Judicial Watch analyzed Federal crime statistics to produce a report this week which reveals that about half of the Nation’s Federal criminal cases were filed in areas near the Southern U.S. border, including: 6,130 in the southern part of Texas; 4,848 in Southern California; 3,889 in New Mexico; and 3,538 in Arizona.

Via Judicial Watch: 

Not surprisingly, most of the offenses were immigration related. In fact, 38.6% of all federal cases (23,744) filed last year involved immigration, the DOJ report confirms. Nearly 22% (13,383) were drug related, 19.7% (12,123) were violent crimes and 10.2% (6,300) involved white-collar offenses that include a full range of frauds committed by business and government professionals. This is hardly earth-shattering news in fact, the nation’s southern border region has for years been known for its high crime rate compared to the rest of the country.

However, the problem has escalated at an alarming rate in the last few years. Last spring Judicial Watch reported that violence in the region has gotten so out of control that both Mexican and American journalists have largely stopped reporting it out of fear that drug cartels will retaliate against them and their families. Around the same time a small town paper in Reynosa, the twin borer city of McAllen in south Texas, bravely ran a story describing the fear and panic that filled the streets during a three-hour firefight between rival drug cartels.

Meanwhile, ranchers and other landowners in areas near the border are reporting increasing occurrences of trespassing and property damage related to the immigration surge.

Texas-based ABC 13 reports:

In just one constable’s precinct in Hidalgo County that reaches into the ranch land, there have been 47 calls from ranchers concerning traffickers busting through fences on ranches in the first six months of 2014, according to crime statistics provided by officials with Precinct 4.

“I promise you the number of incidents of ranch crossings is double or triple that,” Precinct 4 Sgt. Aaron Moreno told ABC-13.

Those stats also show a total of 64 “bailouts,” in those ranch areas in that six-month span. That’s where an officer stops a vehicle, or a vehicle crashes and the passengers scatter.

On Wednesday alone between 1 and 3 pm, in the ranches covered by Precinct 4′s constables, there were three incidents of vehicles carrying large groups of people that busted through fences. Those vehicles were either were stopped by officers or crashed and the passengers fled.

Americans in the Nation’s heartland may, for the moment, feel insulated from the immigration-related crime wave by distance, but Border Patrol agent Chris Cabrera, who spoke to Fox News on Wednesday, suggested that illegal aliens with criminal pasts are making their way to communities throughout the country.

“If they have family in the United States, they’ll release them to the family, even if they’re admitted gang members,” he said. “We’ve had a couple that had admitted to murders in their home country. They were 17 years old, 16 years old, and the United States government thought it fit to release them to their parents here in the United States.

“Even if he’s a confirmed gang member, a confirmed criminal even by self-admission, we for some reason don’t send them back to their home country, we release them into our country.”

Cabrera blamed the admittance of known criminals to the U.S. on an immigration loophole.

“They found a loophole with the unaccompanied women and children,” he said. “We don’t have anywhere to house these women and children and if the child has no family back in his home country, or claims he has no family back in his home country, we have to release him to a parent who is here.”