Immigrant Crime in Texas

Dueling reports were discussed at a Texas hearing on criminality in the immigrant community. I’ve looked a the reports discussed, and the study by Ruben Rumbaut from UC Irvine is based on actual data, rather than anecdotes.

Dianne Solis writes in the The Dallas Morning News:

A public hearing Friday on immigrants in Texas jails and prisons shed light on holes in the criminal justice pipelines, state and local, and the lack of information on the legal status of those behind bars.
A sign cautioning people not to be disruptive was affixed to a door at Friday’s public hearing at the University of Texas at Dallas, which was conducted by a pair of state House committees.

The Texas House Committee on Corrections and the Committee on County Affairs held the all-day hearing at the University of Texas at Dallas to attempt to determine:

•Whether the state has a problem in the prison system.

•What the dividing line is between state and federal authorities.

•The cost for people who are arrested and charged with felonies and convicted of felonies.

•Whether state agencies are coordinating with one another.

More than 200 people turned out Friday. And as expected, emotions ran high on illegal immigration and alleged racial profiling of Hispanics, amid readings of statistics and contradictory reports.

Some even questioned why the hearing – the first of several around the state – was held.

Others urged legislators not to be soft on crime committed by those in the U.S. illegally.

“Texas legislators must step up and become more accountable,” said Jean Towell, president and co-founder of Dallas-based Citizens for Immigration Reform. Those in the U.S. illegally who have committed nonviolent crimes should not be given early release and they should be deported as well, Ms. Towell said.

“We must make Texas a safer place,” she said.

Legislators were presented with two contradictory studies on crime and immigration. One study, co-authored by Ruben Rumbaut of the University of California at Irvine, looked at incarceration rates among young men and showed those rates to be the lowest for immigrants, even those who are the least educated.

Another, authored by Carl Horowitz, of the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington, D.C., research center, said that criminal gangs with ties to immigrant communities are a problem “understated” in crime statistics and that immigrants are less likely to report crime, according to a presentation by one speaker.  Click here for the full story.

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