Immigration Crimes Account for 95% of Increased Federal Arrests over Last 20 Years
Media Matters for America will hate this headline. They’ve actually already fact-checked another outlet that talked about this same topic.
But that liberal “watchdog” organization can grouse all they want if they don’t like the facts. As John Adams once said, “Facts are stubborn things.”
The establishment media’s chief narrative on illegal immigration is that illegals are overwhelmingly decent, hard-working people with families who are coming to America to enjoy the prosperity you and I were born with thanks to the lottery of birth.
Accepting that narrative themselves, the media and others on the left then cast a blind eye on any laws these decent people might break in the process of coming here.
Borders are artificial constructs. No human is illegal. America is a nation of immigrants. The slogans go on and on, and, as far as these ones go, they’re actually true.
But there’s a problem.
Laws are still laws. It doesn’t matter who breaks the law. It matters that the law has been broken. And the left has never managed to grasp that.
The rule of law has always been more of a suggestion to the left, as are the ideas of absolute truth, objective morality and an actual God.
So it should come as no surprise that Media Matters and their friends are playing down statistics showing that 95 percent of the increase in federal arrests over the last 20 years had to do with immigration offenses.
That number, which comes from Justice Department statistics encompassing the period between 1998 and 2018, is solid. NBC News even reported on it, miraculously.
The total number of federal arrests increased from 103,866 in 1998 to 195,771 in 2018. Over that same period, the number of immigration arrests rose from 20,942 to 108,667, the Bureau of Justice Statistics says.
If it shocks you, well, it should. That figure means fixing the border problem would reduce the number of federal arrests nearly back to the level it was in the early 2000s.
Imagine that. The officers, cars, jail space and other resources needed to deal with the entire arrest surge would be freed up. Who knows how many millions of dollars could be saved and then either be refunded to the American taxpayers or perhaps used to help law enforcement who would remain in the field.
Now, Media Matters would argue that 95 percent number is deceptive since one of the only reasons arrests have risen over that time is because of the increase in immigration crime enforcement.
OK, fine, you can have that one, Media Matters. But then you’ve also got to accept that either the number of crimes has skyrocketed or the number of crimes being ignored before was astronomical.
And that’s where the left’s lack of respect for the rule of law comes in.
Media Matters isn’t upset about that 95 percent figure — not really. They’re upset that a law they don’t like but that Congress passed is being enforced.
And, Media Matters, I don’t know what to tell you.
Obeying constitutional laws passed over your objection is kind of a prerequisite for a healthy democracy.
But your disregard for that should come as no surprise, after all, since democracy isn’t really what you want. Right?
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