WASHINGTON, D.C. - Many have long suspected that illegal alien crime is being significantly underreported. Now, a United States senator is calling on the Department of Justice and the FBI to close “critical gaps” in such reporting.
Senator Jim Banks (R-Ind.) is calling on Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel to amend how crime is reported, noting that the current system hides a “serious and growing problem with immigrant crime in America,” a letter obtained by Fox News Digital read.
The senator told Bondi and Patel that since local and state law enforcement authorities don’t report the immigration status of arrestees, the accurate amount of crime being committed by illegal aliens is vastly underreported.
Banks urged the agencies to encourage local and state law enforcement authorities to collect the immigration status, as well as the national origin and ethnicity, of arrestees by amending the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), which most police agencies in the country contribute to.
At present, NIBRS only includes ethnicity as an optional element and does not require police to collect an arrestee’s immigration status or national origin.
Banks noted that even though the DOJ collects “aggregate” statistics bout the citizenship of prison populations, it doesn’t differentiate between noncitizens with legal status and those in the country illegally. He believes the current system leaves out offenders in local jails, which accounts for approximately one-third of the prison population.
Banks wrote that closing these gaps in reporting would be in line with the president’s April executive order, “Strengthening and Unleashing America’s Law Enforcement to Pursue Criminals and Protect Innocent Citizens,” which directed the DOJ and other federal agencies to “increase the investment in and collection, distribution, and uniformity of crime data across jurisdictions.”
Banks also highlighted the fact that while the Bureau of Prisons and the U.S. Sentencing Commission track the national origin of federal offenders, local and state officials, who respond to and track the overwhelming majority of crime occurring in the U.S., primarily do not track such information.
“The overwhelming majority of crime happens at the state and local level. Most violent crimes, most property crimes, and many drug offenses fall under local jurisdiction,” Banks wrote, adding that “the responsibility for reporting the citizenship status of offenders falls largely on states and localities–but they generally do not track this data.”
“[E]ven though many individuals entering the country have a violent past, critical gaps in crime data reporting keep the American people from understanding when and how often these individuals and other aliens commit crimes once they are here,” he continued.
Banks noted a 2018 study by the Center for Immigration Studies found that between 2011 and 2016, 21% of those convicted of non-immigration crimes were noncitizens, which is 2.5 times their share of the population. Data from the U.S. Sentencing Commission found that of those convicted of federal crimes between 2011 and 2016, 44.2% were not U.S. citizens, and 21.4% of immigration crimes were excluded, Fox News Digital reported. The study further noted that noncitizens at the time accounted for only 8.4% of the adult population, with about 4% being illegal aliens and 4% being legal immigrants.
Moreover, the study showed that although immigrants only accounted for 8.4% of the population at that time, 42.4% of kidnapping convictions, 31.5% of drug convictions, and 22.9% of money laundering convictions were committed by legal immigrants and illegal aliens.
“The United States has a serious and growing problem with immigrant crime. Of course, every person who enters the United States illegally commits a crime. But those who cross our borders are increasingly likely to threaten the lives and safety of American citizens,” Banks wrote.
“Any crime committed by an illegal alien is one crime too many, but the American people and their elected representatives deserve to know how many of these crimes are happening, and to set immigration policy accordingly,” Banks added.
Pro-illegal alien groups have attempted to downplay the crime issue caused by illegals, citing the flawed data that Banks is concerned about. However, if the immigration status, national origin, and ethnicity of offenders were accurately reported, those numbers would likely be much higher.
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