Speech #CREC-2017-06-29-pt1-PgH5308-2_t12

These crimes should never have happened. Their assailant had repeatedly entered this country illegally. While here, he had been apprehended for committing other crimes and repeatedly deported, only to easily recross the border without being challenged. I have heard it said there is no evidence that illegal immigrants commit crimes at any higher rate than the general population. Well, that is just not true. It is true that crime statistics don't aggregate by legal status. Some States, like California, no longer even report the legal status of inmates. They can tell us by race, gender, age, background, and jurisdiction who stole a car last year, but they won't tell us how many illegal immigrants did. By painstakingly piecing together all of the available fragmented data in 2015, FOX News concluded that illegal immigrants are three times more likely to be convicted of murder than the legal population. According to this report, illegals account for 3.7 percent of the population but are convicted of 13.6 percent of all crimes, including 12 percent of all murders, 20 percent of all kidnappings, and 16 percent of drug trafficking. Each year, 900,000 illegal immigrants are arrested for crimes. Citing the GAO, FOX reported that 55,000 illegal immigrants were in Federal prison and 296,000 in State and local jails in 2011. The real tragedy is that there should be zero crimes committed by illegal immigrants because there should be zero illegal immigrants in this country. For 16 years, two Presidents--one Republican and one Democrat-- ignored their constitutional responsibility to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. Well, thank God, we finally have a President who takes that responsibility seriously. This rule brings a bill to the floor that increases penalties for those who return to our country after they have been deported. The other to be debated today adds long-overdue sanctions to local jurisdictions that refuse to protect their own citizens, and I rise in strong support of that bill as well. It is too late for Officers Davis and Oliver. It is too late for Kate Steinle. It is too late for thousands of other Americans killed by illegal immigrants. But perhaps it is just in time for your neighbor, your family member, or yourself.