Some scary stuff well past Halloween

Today I debut a new category which deals with the upcoming city of Salisbury elections. With my reach expanding into the Red County: Wicomico site that places emphasis on local issues along with state and national concerns, I can come back into the local realm for items to feed that site as well as inform the folks here. That’s not the scary part, though – for the frightening content you need to keep reading and follow along.

I think that everyone running for Mayor and City Council in Salisbury needs to read this report put out in October by the Center for Immigration Studies. While it sort of languished on the bottom of my “blog ideas” folder, the reason it remained in the stack and wasn’t deleted earlier was because I foresaw a day where I thought it was worth putting on my site, and as we approach municipal elections in a city that indeed has a gang problem and a large immigrant community it seems to me this research is extremely important to peruse.

This is the press release CIS put out at the time, which gave some of the conclusions of study authors Jessica M. Vaughan and Jon D. Feere.

A new Center for Immigration Studies Backgrounder finds that immigration law enforcement has been highly effective in fighting gang activity around the country. Local law enforcement agencies that shun involvement with immigration law enforcement are missing an opportunity to protect their communities, according to the authors. Since 2005, ICE has arrested more than 8,000 immigrant gangsters from more than 700 different gangs under an initiative known as Operation Community Shield.

The Backgrounder,’Taking Back the Streets: ICE and Local Law Enforcement Target Immigrant Gangs,’ by Jessica M. Vaughan and Jon D. Feere, was funded by the Department of Justice and describes the unique public safety problems posed by immigrant gangs. The authors present previously unpublished statistics on gang arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), describe how immigration law enforcement authorities are used to combat gang activity, and offer policy recommendations to improve federal-local cooperation, and without damaging relations with immigrant communities.

(snip)

Among the findings:

  • Transnational immigrant gangs have been spreading rapidly and sprouting in suburban and rural areas where communities are not always equipped to deal with them.
  • A very large share of immigrant gang members are illegal aliens and removable aliens. Federal sources estimate that 60 to 90 percent of the members of MS-13, the most notorious immigrant gang, are illegal aliens. In one jurisdiction studied, Northern Virginia, 30 to 40 percent of the gang task force case load were removable aliens.
  • MS-13 activity was found in 48 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico.
  • The immigrant gangsters arrested were a significant menace to the public. About 80 percent had committed serious crimes in addition to their immigration violations and 40 percent were violent criminals.
  • The ICE offices logging the largest number of immigrant gang arrests were Atlanta, San Francisco, and Dallas. Some cities with significant gang problems, such as Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Houston, had few arrests. These cities had sanctuary, or “don’t ask, don’t tell,” immigration policies in place over the time period studied.
  • While many of the immigrant gangs targeted were neighborhood operations, others were ethnic-based, such as Armenian Power, Kurdish Pride, or Oriental Killer Boys. But nearly half of the aliens arrested over the period studied were affiliated with MS-13 and Surenos-13, two of the largest and most notorious transnational gangs with largely immigrant membership.
  • Nearly 60 percent of immigrant gangsters arrested by ICE were Mexican citizens, 17 percent were Salvadoran, and 5 percent were Honduran. In all, 53 different countries were represented.
  • Immigrant gang members rarely make a living as gangsters. They typaically work by day in construction, auto repair, farming, landscaping and other low-skill occupations, often using false documents. Some gangs are involved in the production and sale of false documents.
  • The research found no “chilling effect” on the reporting of crime as a result of local law enforcement partnerships with ICE. Instead of spreading this misconception, immigrant advocacy groups should help reinforce the message that crime victims and witnesses are not targets of immigration law enforcement.
  • All gang task forces should include either an ICE agent or local officers with formal immigration law training, such as 287(g). Programs aimed solely at removing incarcerated aliens, while helpful, are not as effective in addressing gang activity as investigative programs.
  • While immigration law enforcement is a federal responsibility, ICE cannot do the job effectively without assistance from state and local law enforcement, particularly when it comes to immigrant gangs.

Both Vaughan and Feere work for the CIS, Vaughan as Director of Policy Studies and Feere as Legal Policy Analyst. The CIS also has a video introduction for the report, pay particular attention from about the 6:30 mark on (it’s a little over 8 minutes long):

Aside from the odd and slightly distracting camera angles used at times, the video serves to reinforce the conclusions in the report.

I was quite tempted to bolden a few of the CIS statements above, but instead I think it’s most noteworthy to point out the lack of arrests (read: free pass to operate) in so-called “sanctuary” cities. The other point which jumped out at me regarded the “worker by day, gang member by night” trend the research showed.

Much of the reason Salisbury is plagued by the crime problem it has is the available cash on the streets. Because many immigrants, particularly illegal ones, don’t use banks because they don’t have a Social Security number to open an account, they immediately cash their paychecks at a retail outlet like Wal-Mart (who cashes checks for a small fee) and return after shopping with a large sum of cash, easy prey for robbery. Or they may later need extra cash to pay a bill and without a savings account they turn to a loan shark who is likely part of a gang. Welcome to the crime problem as drug dealers and prostitution also flourish in areas where cash is easily had.

As we approach the elections in March and April, a legitimate question to ask the hopefuls is how they’ll deal with safety on the streets of Salisbury, so this report should be studied carefully.

Author: Michael

It's me from my laptop computer.

3 thoughts on “Some scary stuff well past Halloween”

  1. Just had to wonder how Sbynews got anything. They are so lop-sided it is funny. Does that mean that Salisbury people are stupid, and really by that crap?

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