October 2002
The Criminal Alien Problem Is Growing.
Criminal aliens—non-citizens who commit crimes—are a growing threat to
public safety and national security, as well as a drain on our scarce
criminal justice resources. In 1980, our federal and state prisons
housed fewer than 9,000 criminal aliens. By the end of 1999, these same
prisons housed over 68,000 criminal aliens.1 Today, criminal aliens account
for over 54 percent of federal prison inmates and represent the fastest
growing segment of the federal prison population. Over the past five
years, an average of more than 72,000 aliens have been arrested annually
on drug charges alone.
Continued illegal immigration aggravates the
problem.
Despite the Border Patrol making over one million apprehensions last
year, they estimate they miss two or more illegal bordercrossers for
every apprehension. Most enter for short periods, but there is an estimated
net increase of about 300,000 a year from illegal bordercrossers who
stay. An additional net increase of 200,000 comes from people who enter
legally as nonimmigrants and then violate their status. Among the alien
federal prisoners, over half (55 percent) were illegally in the United
States at the time of their conviction.
Administering justice to criminal aliens costs the
taxpayer dearly.
Incarceration of criminal aliens cost an estimated $624 million to
state prisons (1999) and $891 million to federal prisons (2002), according
to the most recent available figure from the Bureau of Justice
Statistics.
The New York State Senate Committee on Cities estimates that the annual
criminal justice costs for criminal aliens in New York is $270 million.
The Committee has called for a national moratorium on immigration to
help alleviate this problem.2 According to the Illinois Governor’s
Office, Illinois spends over $40 million just on the incarceration of
criminal aliens. The cost to Florida’s judicial and correction system for
criminal aliens was $73 million in 1993. 3 In 1988, there were 5,500
illegal immigrants in California’s prisons. By fiscal year 1994- 1995, that
is estimated to have increased to more than 18,000 illegal immigrants in
state prisons—a three-fold increase. California taxpayers have spent
over a billion dollars in the last five years to keep these convicted
felons in prison, and the FY 94–95 cost of incarcerating these offenders
exceeded $375 million.4 The federal government has begun to reimburse
heavily alien-impacted states for some of the costs of illegal alien
prisoners in their state prisons. For 1996, Congress appropriated $300
million for this program.
Many criminal aliens are released into our society
to commit crimes again.
Too often, criminal aliens are not identified in local and state jails,
the INS is not informed of their presence, detention facilities are not
available when they are released, they fail to report for deportation,
or they return to the United States after deportation. In March 2000,
Congress made public Department of Justice statistics showing that, over
the previous five years, the INS had released over 35,000 criminal
aliens instead of deporting them. Over 11,000 of those released went on to
commit serious crimes, over 1,800 of which were violent ones (including
98 homicides, 142 sexual assaults, and 44 kidnappings). In 2001, thanks
to a decision by the Supreme Court, the INS was forced to release into
our society over 3,000 criminal aliens (who collectively had been
convicted of 125 homicides, 387 sex offenses, and 772 assault charges).5
What can be done?
We must secure our borders. Denying jobs to illegal aliens through a
centralized secure identity verification system is important to that
effort.
We must assure that the criminal conviction of an alien leads to
deportation and permanent exclusion from the United States.
Asylum applicants should be screened expeditiously and excluded if
their claims are not credible. Even if they appear to have credible claims,
they should be detained until background checks are done.
Other corrective measures include greater INS and local government
cooperation to identify criminal aliens, additional detention facilities
for those in deportation proceedings, and improved databases and
screening procedures to identify deported aliens if they try to return here
either overtly or surreptitiously.
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Footnotes:
1 Other aliens not included in this total include immigrants who have
become U.S. citizens (not included in the federal prison data), aliens
being held for trial and some awaiting deportation but not convicted in
the United States, e.g., the Cuban Marielitos.
2 “Our Teeming Shore,” New York State Senate Committee on Cities, Sen.
Frank Padavan, Chr.; Jan. 1994.
3 “The Unfair Burden: Immigration’s Impact on Florida,” Executive
Office of the Governor; March 1994.
4 “California’s Illegal Immigration Costs: A Call for Federal
Leadership,” Office of the Governor; 1994.
5 Zadvydas v. Davis (U.S. 2001).