The League

Deportations: A Recipe For Gangs

by Will Truman · November 7, 2011

Will Truman

Will Truman is the Editor-in-Chief of Ordinary Times. He is also on Twitter.

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Scott says:

November 7, 2011 at 10:31 pm

Meh, deport the scum and let their own country march them to jail as soon as they get off the plane. Once again, some liberal is trying to make us feel bad for enforcing our laws.Report
- Will Truman in reply to Scott says:
  
  November 8, 2011 at 12:18 am
  
  Their own countries aren’t doing that (I don’t know that they even can, since the crime did not occur on their jurisdiction). More to the point, though, since they don’t go to jail in their own countries, they are (allegedly) becoming involved in crime that ends up right back in our country.Report
  - Scott in reply to Will Truman says:
    
    November 8, 2011 at 12:08 pm
    
    Will:
    
    So we should keep illegals locked up in our jails to spare their home country the trouble of dealing with them?Report
    - DensityDuck in reply to Scott says:
      
      November 8, 2011 at 12:35 pm
      
      Apparently that’s the theory.Report
    - S in reply to Scott says:
      
      November 8, 2011 at 12:46 pm
      
      Scott & Duck,
      
      No, that is not the theory. The theory is that we keep them in prison to avoid the trouble they cause *here* by joining criminal organizations that commit crimes here and returning here as part of these organizations.Report
      - Scott in reply to S says:
        
        November 8, 2011 at 8:42 pm
        
        Will:
        
        So if we catch an illegal who is also a gang member we shouldn’t deport them? If we jail an illegal who is a gang member we shouldn’t deport them after they finish their sentence?Report
        
        Tom Van Dyke in reply to Scott says:
        
        November 8, 2011 at 9:47 pm
        
        Shhhh, Scott. BHO been running his own version of the Mariel boatlift:
        
        Mexican president: US dumping criminals at border
        
        (AP) MEXICO CITY — Mexican President Felipe Calderon accused the United States on Thursday of dumping criminals at the border because it is cheaper than prosecuting them, and said the practice has fueled violence in Mexico’s border areas.
        
        U.S. officials earlier this week reported a record number of deportations in fiscal year 2011, and said the number of deportees with criminal convictions had nearly doubled since 2008.
        
        Among these deportees “there are many who really are criminals, who have committed some crime and it is simply cheaper to leave them on the Mexican side of the border than to prosecute them, as they should do, to see whether they are guilty or not,” Calderon said. “And obviously, they quickly link up with criminal networks on the border.”
        
        Report
        
        Will Truman in reply to Scott says:
        
        November 8, 2011 at 10:10 pm
        
        I don’t know what we do, Scott. I certainly never suggested we just drop them off at the nearest convenience store when they’re done. If you’d asked me before, I’d have said “Yeah, just ship them home and save ourselves the money.” But this seems to suggest that’s not a good idea. Or maybe it’s still a good idea despite this. I put the article up because I found it interesting.Report
        
        Scott in reply to Will Truman says:
        
        November 8, 2011 at 11:00 pm
        
        Will:
        
        Sure the article suggests that deporting them is not a good idea but that doesn’t mean the article presents rational arguments that doing do is a good idea.Report
        
        Will Truman in reply to Scott says:
        
        November 8, 2011 at 11:14 pm
        
        Scott,
        
        The article isn’t saying “ooooh, those poor criminal immigrants, getting sent back to third world countries…” but rather “sending them home is coming back to bite us in the arse, because after they land they are becoming footsoldiers in organizations that are causing us harm.”
        
        That strikes me as a rational argument. At worst, it’s thin on supporting evidence, but I don’t personally feel qualified to tell them that they’re wrong. If someone with a lot more knowledge of these things does, I would certainly consider that as well.Report
Kolohe says:

November 7, 2011 at 11:31 pm

I likely have a very different view on immigration than Scott above, but I got to say 1) since when do we take the word of a government agency (seeking funding in a tight budget environment) as gospel? 2) is the US murder rate (or general crime rate) going up with this (so stipulated) increase in gang activity? 3) there’s not a good ruling out of a post-hoc fallacy wrt to the Central American murders rate & Colombia’s murder rate has dropped by a third in last decade* and 4)

For hard-core gang members, quickie deportations on immigration charges are often no more than short-term fixes; lengthy American prison sentences would be more effective.

why the heck do we want to spend 30K+ a year a head on locking people people if kicking them out with a 500 buck plane fare is not increasing our crime rate?

*and El Salvador’s rate has almost always been high in this decade, Guatemala’s and Honduras’s has been all over the place – and Venezuela and Jamaica, two countries with significantly different relations with the US than the aforementioned, also have had a fairly consistently high murder rate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate#2000sReport
- Will Truman in reply to Kolohe says:
  
  November 8, 2011 at 12:29 am
  
  These are all good points. With regard to #2, though, I think you would have to look more specifically at anti-gang violence rather than overall crime rates. If it’s one step forward (in domestic crime), one step back (with foreign gangs), we do need to be looking at the step back. On #3, good point about Colombia, though Honduras’s hasn’t been “all over the place” so much as it went down but then started climbing back up five years or so ago, and Guatemala’s has been a steady climb since 2000. El Salvadore’s does bounce around a bit, for sure.Report
Jason Kuznicki says:

November 8, 2011 at 10:03 am

If the majority wants it, that makes it okay though, right?Report
- DensityDuck in reply to Jason Kuznicki says:
  
  November 8, 2011 at 12:38 pm
  
  That’s what democracy looks like.Report
Jesse Ewiak says:

November 8, 2011 at 11:32 pm

As a side note, and this seems to be a quasi-decent place to put it, the author of the SB1070 bill, or more accurately, the guy who took the ALEC template and pasted Arizona in it, Russel Pearce, lost in a recall to another, more sane Republican.Report