Email, Ramiro Martinez, Jr., professor, Northeastern University, School of Criminology & Criminal Justice, Department of Sociology, March 14, 2018

1:48 p.m.

I tried to get some perspective on this claim. First I looked at the UCR which consists of all person and property crimes reported to police agencies.  These are major crimes (homicide, rape, aggravated assault, armed robbery, theft, burglary, motor vehicle theft and arson). This excel run does not include minor offenses. What is obstructing police? Weapons? Or 274 Kidnappings over 7 years or so? Half that of homicides? You can replicate this using this tool. Does not cover the same years as DHS but will return to that in a moment.

https://www.bjs.gov/ucrdata/Search/Crime/State/RunCrimeStatebyState.cfm

The UCR tells us that between 2011-2014 in the state of Texas 4,602 homicides were reported to the police. For rough comparison we double that number to parallel the DHS data that’s about 9200 homicides in Texas. The TCAAD (Texas Criminal Alien Arrest Data) reports 1,323 homicide arrests (and only 566 convictions which raises questions about the arrests). So what is the point?  Claims that about 14% of all homicide arrests are by undocumented? About  16 percent of Texas residents are foreign-born (See U.S. Census) which roughly corresponds with population size. Caveats across the board of course on year and so on but in line with population expectations.    

Anyway not sure how DHS identifies “illegal” at time of arrest. The offenses should correspond to a specific number of undocumented. Equal proportions are those that crossed the border or overstays that initially came in with a temporary visa (tourist, student so on) and stayed for whatever reason after the visa expired. So, the protecting the border claim does not correspond even the case of Texas.

Is a “criminal career” arrests over 2011-2018 or does it include pre-2011? My guess is most are drugs (78,198)  and all other offenses (358,996) are all minor offenses. Not sure if one arrest corresponds to one offender or single incident. One victim and one offender or multiple offenders? The latter inflates the number of arrests. Could be substantial fraction of offenders in for one victim or offense.

That number and data is not surprising since corresponds to what we know about most crime in the United States. A sea of minor drug and property crimes.

Ramiro Martinez, Jr.

Northeastern University

Professor in School of Criminology & Criminal Justice and in Department of Sociology

___________________________________________

Through August 2018:

Chair, Section on Crime, Law and Deviance

American Sociological Association

https://www.amazon.com/Latino-Homicide-Immigration-Violence-Community/dp/0415536537/ref=mt_paperback?_encoding=UTF8&me=