Does illegal immigration lead to more crime?
Police, advocates say link is tough to find
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Local police are taking on a greater role in helping federal immigration officials catch and deport people living in the country illegally, law enforcement officials say.
But the question of how much undocumented immigrants contribute to St. Charles County’s crime rate -- and what should be done about it -- is one for which few police officers and immigrant advocates have answers.
During the summer of 2007, Gov. Matt Blunt pointed to a crime committed in New Jersey as justification for attempts to crack down on undocumented immigrants in Missouri.
But the relationship between illegal immigration and crime is complicated. Studies released early this year and in 2007 suggest that immigration does not lead to increased crime, a view that appears to be supported by data and opinions of law enforcement officials in St. Charles County.
In St. Charles, police say about 2.4 percent of people arrested in 2006 were in the country illegally.
"In the 19 years I have been here, I guarantee our Hispanic population has increased, in the St. Louis area the Somalian and Bosnian populations have increased, and I would consider 2 percent not a significant contribution," said St. Charles Police Public Information Officer Lt. Donovan Kenton.
Washington lobbying groups pushing for tighter immigration laws, including the Federation for American Immigration Reform and the Center for Immigration Studies, disagree. They say illegal immigration leads to lawlessness on American soil.
TEAMING UP WITH THE FEDS
In the midst of the debate about illegal immigration and crime, county leaders have moved to deputize local police to root out illegal immigrants. The Missouri Highway Patrol also has taken steps to partner with the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, known as ICE.
Capt. Kevin Pyatt, public information officer with the Wentzville Police Department, said his department has worked with ICE in the past. Pyatt said his department has been asked by ICE to assist the agency on a case and has a well-established relationship with the federal agency. In January, the department also called ICE after arriving at the scene of an accident where it was determined one of the drivers was in the country illegally.
Pyatt said that after the terrorist attacks of 2001, ICE is much more responsive when the department reports the presence of undocumented immigrants.
"Before, they would just say to ID them, send the name and information to the agency and let them go," Pyatt explained.
Immigration officials have not done ride-alongs with local law enforcement, according to police departments across the county.
State troopers have worked with ICE in the past, said John Hotz , Missouri State Highway Patrol Assistant Director of Public Information and Education.
In January and February, more than 500 state highway patrol and local law enforcement officers participated in ICE ACCESS Summits. At one such summit, an ICE agent said it can take up to four hours per suspect to process the paperwork necessary for ICE to detain suspected undocumented immigrants.
Maj. Ron Repogle, commander of the highway patrol’s criminal investigation bureau, said the state patrol has petitioned to train 25 of its officers for immigration enforcement training. The training would allow officers to investigate, arrest and detain suspected undocumented immigrants. That application has been pending since August of 2007.
'NOT BIG CONTRIBUTORS TO CRIME'
Of the larger municipalities across the county, only St. Charles and O’Fallon said they record the number of undocumented immigrants arrested by their police departments.
In 2006, the last year for which the St. Charles Police Department provided statistics on immigration status, the police department confirmed that 90 of the 3,726 people it arrested had immigrated illegally. Of those, 27 were released to ICE on various charges including traffic violations, assault, forcible rape and driving while intoxicated. The other 63 were released. Kenton said charges may or may not have resulted for those cases. The 90 arrests made up about 2.4 percent of all those taken into custody during 2006.
O’Fallon Police Public Information Officer Diane Damke, who had statistics for arrests of undocumented immigrants in that city in 2006, said 20 individuals had been arrested that year that were in the country illegally of a total of 3,701. That amounts to less than 1 percent of total arrests. In 2007, the percentage of arrest of undocumented immigrants among all arrests was 0.2 percent, seven of 3,716 total arrests. None of those seven were arrested as a result of a violent crime, Damke noted. O’Fallon Police Maj. Bill Cibert echoed the numbers when asked about the effects of illegal immigration upon crime in O’Fallon.
"Based on my personal opinion, illegal immigrants are not big contributors to crime in O’Fallon," he said.
St. Peters and Wentzville Police departments said they do not record data related to immigration status of people they arrest.
Pyatt said he considers incidents resulting from illegal immigration a concern for law enforcement officials in Wentzville, though he did not have data on how often undocumented immigrants commit crimes in his city.
Since Gov. Blunt announced a crackdown on undocumented immigrants last August, Repogle says the highway patrol checks the immigration status of everyone presented for incarceration. Between August and February, the patrol had identified 145 undocumented immigrants being booked, Repogle said.
Gary Hartwig, deputy special agent with the Chicago office of ICE, whose jurisdiction touches Missouri and five other states, said ICE interacts on a daily basis with local law enforcement officers.
"It’s a force multiplier for us," Hartwig said of cooperation with local law enforcement. "We look to state and local partners to in fact make sure we can work in a diligent manner."
STUDIES MIXED ON IMMIGRANTS, CRIME
A study by the Immigration Policy Center, the research arm of the American Immigration Law Foundation, indicated that even as the undocumented population has doubled since 1994, the violent crime rate has declined 34.2 percent and the property crime rate has fallen 26.4 percent.
Anti-illegal immigration groups charge that the policy center’s report does not provide an accurate account of the situation. The Center for Immigration Studies, which promotes stricter immigration control, has published articles on its Web site citing examples of gang activity and criminality in Los Angeles and throughout California. The center contends that immigrants are significant contributors to crime, particularly in areas of high immigrant density like Los Angeles, Chicago and New York. The CIS report did not cite sources for its statistics.
In a Harvard study released in March, sociologist Robert Sampson found that immigrant-saturated neighborhoods have less crime. The study did not focus exclusively on undocumented immigrants. The study did find that concentrated immigration predicts lower rates of violence across communities in Chicago, where 180 neighborhoods were examined. The relationship was strongest in poor neighborhoods. The study found that first-generation immigrants were 45 percent less likely to commit violence than third-generation Americans.
The study also found that incarceration of those born in the United States was five times higher in 2000 than the less than 1 percent incarceration rate among foreign-born individuals in the United States.
"The misperception that foreign-born, especially illegal immigrants, are responsible for higher crime rates is deeply rooted in American public opinion and is sustained by media anecdote and popular myth," the report read.
TRACKING SYSTEM OUTDATED
Here in St. Charles County, law enforcement officials say they don’t actively search for undocumented immigrants.
But St. Charles County Corrections Director Alan Stahl said earlier in the year that ICE agents visited the St. Charles County jail twice a day, spending two to three hours at the county facility. Stahl said he considered the visits effective and useful, though neither the federal agency nor Stahl would confirm the number of undocumented immigrants found among inmates
The daily visits were a result of the county jail system’s outdated computer system, which prevented remote access by ICE. The jail’s software was expected to be upgraded this spring.
O’Fallon City Administrator Robert Lowery, Jr. has said O’Fallon police do not pursue undocumented immigrants, but rather come into contact with them on incidents such as traffic stops. Kenton said St. Charles police have taken the same approach.
By and large, the effectiveness of local law enforcement policies against illegal immigration remains unknown because not every municipality keeps a record of those it has reported to ICE.
