"I can't hear youuuuu"
Posted on 06/10/2011 6:49:27 AM PDT by Kaslin
The General Accounting Office estimates that as of 2009 there were currently about 350,000 criminal aliens in U.S. prisons, “the majority from Mexico.” At $30,000 per year, per inmate, that’s $11 billion annually, with most of the costs born by the states.
While not all of the criminal aliens are here illegally, criminal illegals are putting a strain on budgets, especially in the states with large illegal immigration populations such as Arizona, Colorado, California, Florida, New York, and Texas.
Not coincidentally, many of those same states are facing the largest budget shortfalls for fiscal year 2011 and 2012, including New York and California. Some estimate state budget shortfalls of over $100 billion in 2012 across state governments in the U.S.
In California, it’s estimated that prisoners who are illegal immigrants cost the state at least $1 billion per year just to keep them in prison.
Across the country, states' governments are shouldering both the growing financial burden of keeping criminal illegal aliens in jail and the growing law enforcement burden of securing the community from the crimes of illegal aliens in the face of hostility from the executive branch of the federal government.
Corrections.com trumpets the problem as “Foreign Inmates Busting Budgets.”
"There's no question illegal immigration continues to be a large and costly problem in California and around the nation," Rep. Kevin McCarthy, a Republican from CA-22, told Bakersfield’s Eyewitness News. "The first and most important step to addressing this problem is securing our border. The federal government can and should do more to ensure our border is secure, including more physical barriers, border patrol and electronic surveillance."
The Denver Post reports that foreign-born inmates are the fastest growing segment of the prison population in the Mile High state. The number in U.S. Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainers in Colorado prisons “have more than doubled in 10 years from 680 to 1,500, said Tom Clements, executive director of the state Department of Corrections,” according to the Post.
"That's huge," Clements emphasized.
As the economy continues to stumble, states are getting pinched hard by the federal government because they refuse to address immigration reform.
In Colorado, Attorney General John Suthers estimates that the cost to house prisoners in the U.S. illegally was $58 million in 2008.
“At the time, the federal government's State Criminal Alien Assistance Program reimbursed Colorado $3.3 million, or about 6 percent of the state's costs,” says the Post. “The amount has since dropped to $2.9 million even as the number of foreign inmates continues to rise.”
These costs have likely grown since 2008 even while federal assistance has dropped.
In California, both Democrats and Republicans are asking President Obama to fund what Colorado’s AG, John Suthers, decries as just another unfunded mandate by the federal government.
"To receive less than full reimbursement for the use of state facilities to house illegal immigrants is an unacceptable, unfunded federal mandate," Suthers said according to the Post.
In California, Democrat Congressman Jim Costa said that "California cannot and should not have to shoulder this burden alone," according to Bakersfield Now. He called upon the federal government to fully fund the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program to help reimburse the costs of detaining illegal immigrants who have committed crimes.
But even fully funded, the program just transfers the burden across the country into the wallets of taxpayers from all of the states rather than addressing the issue in any substantive way.
The costs are not just financial either.
In California, the feds have ordered that 33,000 prisoners be released to relieve over-crowding in state prisons. Bakersfield Now estimates that about 20,000 of the states’ 162,000 prisoners are in the U.S. illegally. In other words, they make up about 60 percent of the overcrowding in California prisons while accounting for 13 percent of the prisons’ population.
While it’s unclear how California will comply with the ruling to release prisoners, it’s clear that they will not be able to deport illegal immigrants discharged from prison under the ruling. Instead, they can either be released on parole or can be turned over to the U.S. Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement for deportation.
In Texas, “[l]aw enforcement and prison officials have complained that many of the convicts who are paroled to be deported are never sent home, and they end up committing new crimes and getting rearrested,” says the Statesman.com.
That’s in part because under a Supreme Court ruling Clark v. Martinez, ICE can only hold criminal illegal aliens for six months if the convict can’t be repatriated to another country.
“Because of the way current law is written, recent Supreme Court rulings have required dangerous criminal immigrants to be released into our communities,” says Lamar Smith a Texas Republican who is chair of the House Judiciary Committee and a member of the Tea Party Caucus. “All too often these criminal immigrants have gone on to commit more crimes.”
Instead, Smith is proposing that the Department of Homeland Security be authorized to detain criminal illegal immigrants if they can’t be deported, especially if the criminal “either is an aggravated felon or has committed a crime of violence.”
“Just because a criminal immigrant cannot be returned to their home country does not mean they should be allowed back on our streets,” says Smith. “If dangerous criminal immigrants cannot be deported, they should be detained. There is no excuse for placing American lives at risk.”
There is no excuse at all.
The violations of law and trust by King George III in Parliament pales in comparison to the loss of trust as a result of the non-enforcement of immigration laws, especially as it relates to criminal illegal aliens.
If we can't get the government to agree that at a minumum we shouldn't be releasing criminal illegal aliens back into our communities, I have no idea why we have a federal government in the first place.
“The System Is Working.”
Put them on a chain gang and have them pick vegetables and the other jobs Americans don’t want to do. Let them pay for themselves.
"I can't hear youuuuu"
BULL!!! California is a self inflicted wound. They spend billions every year to support these illegals. Let California rot in its own garbage. They created the problem. Let them suffer the consequences. My home state, Alabama, is taking steps on illegals. California just welcomes them more and more, for the votes. Which is stupid as the communists already control the Soviet satellite state of Kaliforniastan.
The Peoples’ Republik of Kalifornia is a petri dish for all these ‘pathogens’
What a great system! Have other people pay to increase your voter base.
get your sanctuary cities to pay for them
Thanks for posting. I sent this to my Congressmen (I recently discovered Congress.org which saves me a lot of time) along with my solution:
1)deport or imprison ALL illegal aliens,including their anchor babies
2) send Mexico a bill for housing their scum in our prisons
3)seal/secure the border with armed troops, a wall and a fence
4)have a lethal response to anyone who tries to re-enter illegally
Criminal illegals?
As opposed to NON-Criminal Illegals?.............
States give up their freedom for reach fed dollar accepted
An easy fix for this is the Joe Arpaio solution.
Set up tent prisons in the desert near the border. They are much cheaper than “brick prisons”, and by international law, “military field conditions” are *not* “cruel and unusual”.
Each prison would have its own federal immigration judge, to hear the merits of each case before ordering deportation. It would also have a processing trailer to insure that detailed biometric data was collected from every illegal alien prior to deportation.
Then, any illegal alien prisoner who had committed a serious misdemeanor or felony crime in the US would be permanently barred from reentry. Returning after such a bar is a serious multi-year felony offense.
I would also include a process used by the State of Arizona. Since just south of the border is an ultra-violent killing field, Arizona has taken to flying illegal immigrants direct to Mexico City. The illegals are far happier about this, and it serves the dual purpose of being about 1200 miles to the US border, so it is much harder for them to return to the US.
The benefits of doing all of this is first, clearing our brick jails and prisons of illegal aliens who have about concluded their sentences, thus saving States millions of dollars. Secondly, isolated tent prisons in the desert near the border need minimal security, because there is nowhere to go to on foot.
Third, since they are going to be deported anyway, and this is important, many of them will vie for *voluntary* repatriation, so can be put right on the plane. This will expedite the process considerably.
Non-enforcement of immigration laws.Another gift from congress. /S
Ping!
I'm speechless...
You’re retired military; how do you not see that California was invaded and colonized against the will of her American citizens? And YOUR federal government and YOUR military, never lifted a finger to stop it?
The Federal government claims as its sole purview everything that would have helped California defend herself: internal deportation, closing the border; ending birthright citizenship; citizenship requirements for welfare benefits; citizenship requirements for public schooling; and workplace citizenship verification.
Californians enacted EVERY SINGLE ONE of those things early on in the invasion, either administratively or at the ballot box, and the Federal Government slapped them all down. Court verdicts were clear: the Federal government won’t deport them, so California MUST support them. And we have. And it’s bankrupted us.
Meanwhile, the rest of the American states yawned. THEIR states weren’t on the front lines of the invasion, so let California twist in the wind.
Now we’ve been thoroughly colonized, and the invaders and second generation spawn control the state government through ballot box numbers. Is it still our fault?
I don’t understand why so many Americans are petulantly and childishly okay with surrendering an American state to a foreign country. It’s craven and shameful. Does it make you feel better to blame Californians for your abandoning us? Are you jealous of our weather? I just don’t get it.
Please report back to FR after your home state of Alabama gets dragged into court over your immigration self-defense measures — you know, the ones California enacted twenty years ago — and your self-righteous, historically ignorant fat head is handed to you by your Federal government.
Well we will just have to change the law that prohibits prostitution..so they can keep doing “work” no American wants to do
The feds will release them in order to create the chaos and destruction needed to bring about hope and change
I wonder if John McCain used that in his calculations for cheap lettuce.
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