Foreign national crime needs more media coverage

Letter date: 
Tuesday, December 13, 2016
Letter publisher: 
Statesman Journal
Letter author: 
David Olen Cross
Letter body: 

One of the detrimental impacts of having a significant foreign national population residing in the United States — be they legally or illegally present — is crime.

The scope and impact of foreign national crime on U.S. citizens and residents is virtually going almost unreported in mainstream electronic or hard copy news sources.

For example, information on foreign national crime is readily available to any news source by simply doing a search on the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) inmates statistics website under the heading of inmate citizenship.

Searching the U.S. BOP website reveals the number and percentage of criminal aliens in federal prisons on Oct. 29, 2016. Totaling up the numbers, 41,946 criminal alien inmates represented 21.9 percent of the federal prison population with 27,815 Mexican nationals representing a staggering 66.3 percent of the criminal aliens in federal prisons.

The fourth estate, defined as “the public press,” needs to exercise due diligence in reporting on foreign national crime so that governmental officials responsible for law enforcement at a national, state and local level will be held accountable in enforcing laws written to protect U.S. citizens and residents from criminal aliens that have and continue to invade our country.