Murdered By Illegals

Michelle Malkin and some NY papers are keeping a focus on the murder of Adrienne Shelly, right, an indie film star and ex-wife of leftyblogger Andy Ostroy.

Adrienne was murdered by an illigal immigrant who was doing construction work in the apartment below hers. He explained the crime simply, in Spanish: "I was having a bad day."

A lot of people have had bad days at the hands of illegals, but it's hard to find out how many. The U.S. Dept. of Justice gathers statistics on the role of alcohol in violent crime, but does not post similar informaiton on crime rates based on citizenship status.

Still, we know that in Los Angeles, 95 percent of the 1,200 to 1,500 outstanding warrants for homicide target illegal aliens, and up p to two-thirds of all the city's 17,000 fugitive felony warrants are for illegal aliens, reported Heather MacDonald in City Journal in 2004 -- two years of worsening conditions ago.

While straight stats on illegals and violent crime are hard to come by -- I searched the sites of Homeland Security, the Dept. of Justice and the FBI, and could find no stats sorted by immigration status -- I did find a lot of annecdotal evidence that what happened to Adrienne Shelley is not all that unusual.

Before getting to that, I did find the results of one INS study of incarcerated illegals. Of course, this study focuses only on obvious criminals and does not take into account those illegals who do not commit crimes ... or have not been caught:

In the population study of a sample of 55,322 illegal aliens, researchers found that they were arrested at least a total of 459,614 times, averaging about 8 arrests per illegal alien. Nearly all had more than 1 arrest. Thirty-eight percent (about 21,000) had between 2 and 5 arrests, 32 percent (about 18,000) had between 6 and 10 arrests, and 26 percent (about 15,000) had 11 or more arrests. Most of the arrests occurred after 1990.

They were arrested for a total of about 700,000 criminal offenses, averaging about 13 offenses per illegal alien. One arrest incident may include multiple offenses, a fact that explains why there are nearly one and half times more offenses than arrests. Almost all of these illegal aliens were arrested for more than 1 offense. Slightly more than half of the 55,322 illegal aliens had between 2 and 10 offenses.

Twelve percent of these incarcerated illegals had committed violent crimes.

Typical of the annecdotal stuff is tThe Web site Immigration's Human Cost, which has a very long page dedicated to those who have died at the hands of illegals, including this sad story:

At the left is shown Darlene Squires, the distraught mother of a disabled teenager, one of two girls who were raped on October 24, 2002, by three members of a Salvadoran street gang located in Somerville, Massachusetts. Aged 17 and 14, both victims are deaf and one has cerebral palsy. Mrs. Squires believed that the attacks were a retaliation against her family because her husband confronted the young men after they had harassed the Squires son. Later reports indicated the men arrested for the crime were illegal aliens.

It seems a logical thing for Congress to begin requiring federal agencies to keep track of illegals charged and convicted of crimes, but if that has occured, it's not readily evident. And if it hasn't, the chances of it happening now under a Dem Congress are slim.

It ought to be easier to obtain current information on this life-and-death aspect of the immigration debate. Libs will say it will just cause hatred and hate crimes. I think instead that it will just cause more effective enforcement of our just laws.

Related Tags: Illegal immigration, Illegals, Crime, Adrienne Shelley