Oregon’s elected leaders must stop crime by illegal immigrants

Oregonians have recently chosen major-party nominees for governor and the Legislature. Now those candidates should explain how they would take action to solve a serious state problem: crime by illegal immigrants.

Should citizens and lawmakers be concerned about the crimes committed by illegal immigrants? In April 2016, almost half of Oregon’s Department of Corrections foreign inmates awaiting transfer to U.S. authorities (some 47 percent) were incarcerated for rape and other sex crimes. More than 14 percent were serving time for murder and 11 percent for drug offenses. These crimes have real victims.

David Olen Cross, a Salem-based expert on foreign-national crime, has analyzed DOC data to elucidate the problem’s magnitude. His findings: In April, 948 foreign nationals awaiting transfer to federal immigration authorities (the great majority of them almost certainly illegal immigrants) were incarcerated in Oregon state prisons. (DOC does not disclose how many of its foreign inmates are here illegally. But a recent Syracuse University study found that nationally, more than 90 percent of foreign inmates held by state and local law-enforcement agencies for eventual surrender to U.S. immigration authorities were illegal immigrants.)

Obama administration policies have compounded illegal-immigrant crime. The federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, Investor’s Business Daily reported recently, “last year opted not to deport but to release 19,723 criminal illegal immigrants, including 208 convicted murderers, more than 900 convicted sex offenders and 12,307 convicted drunk drivers.” Many, the paper noted, will “go on to commit additional crimes.”

Rather than deport all of Oregon’s currently incarcerated illegal immigrants, then, after they complete their sentences, federal authorities may release some back into Oregon communities where they will be free, once again, to victimize our fellow citizens.

Strong action against illegal-immigrant crime should be an urgent priority of our next governor and Legislature. And the best way to fight crime is to prevent it: to dissuade illegal immigrants (who, after all, are violating federal law by their very presence in our country) from coming to Oregon in the first place.

To this end, lawmakers first should reject any new effort to give illegal immigrants the driving privileges that would attract even more of them to Oregon — the privileges, remember, voters rejected overwhelmingly in 2014.

Second, they should mandate that Oregon employers vet their new hires’ legal U.S. presence through the free, federal E-Verify system — a mandate that, enacted in Arizona in 2007, between 2008 and 2009 helped reduce that state’s illegal-immigrant population by 100,000.

Third, they should pass a law to deny illegal immigrants most non-emergency state services.

And last, they should repeal Oregon Revised Statute 181.850, a de facto “sanctuary” law that presumes to limit state and local law-enforcement agencies’ efforts to help apprehend illegal immigrants. After that repeal, they should offer federal immigration authorities (who may, under our next president, resume strong immigration-law enforcement) their robust cooperation.

Too many Oregonians have been victimized — some irreparably — by illegal immigrants. It is time for this to end. Illegal-immigrant crime is eminently preventable by keeping illegal immigrants from our state in the first place. Such a goal must be a foremost priority of our next governor and Legislature.

Cynthia Kendoll of Salem is president of Oregonians for Immigration Reform. She can be reached through oregonir.org.