Sanctuary Redux

Back to the topic of sanctuary cities.  A Federal judge in San Francisco has temporarily blocked President Trump's executive order that would withhold federal funds from sanctuary cities.

San Francisco is a sanctuary city.  Isn't this a conflict of interest?

Moreover, this is a judge in a sanctuary city (of which there are just under 500 in the U.S.) has made policy regarding the use of federal funds for the approximately 20,000 cities in the U.S.  Besides legislating from the bench, this represents the interests of a minority of 2.5% superseding those of the remaining 97.5%.

Ah, Democracy, how we miss you.

President Trump has vowed to take this battle to the Supreme Court.  No matter.  While I do agree with the judge's basis for his ruling, in the end it's little more than barking at the moon.

The basis for the ruling is that the President doesn't control the federal purse strings, Congress does, so it would take an act of Congress to withhold funding from sanctuary cities.  That is correct.

However, it's an exercise in futility, as a practical matter.  When it comes time to dole out federal grants to municipalities, Congress can easily add stipulations that the recipients must cooperate with ICE in order to qualify.

It should be noted that the judge issued his ruling just a short distance away from where Kate Steinle was murdered by an illegal immigrant who had been deported five times, only to return to San Francisco seeking sanctuary.

It should also be noted that this judge was not only an Obama appointee, but served as a bundler for that President's 2008 campaign.  What is a bundler, you ask?  A bundler is someone who gathers campaign contributions from a number of individuals and organizations within a community and presents them to the campaign, in order to get around campaign finance rules that limit contributions from a single individual.  Bundlers often receive special favors from the candidates for whom they raise funds (such as, say, federal bench appointments).

Hmm.  So a federal judge, sworn to uphold the law, having possibly attained his judgeship in return for collecting money for the appointing President's campaign, now issues a ruling against the new opposition party President?

Something is rotten in Denmark - or San Francisco, as it were.

Let's revisit a comment I made in my original post on this topic.  I said, "have you ever seen a headline about an illegal immigrant that since committed another crime turning in another illegal immigrant who has since also committed a crime, thereby preventing yet another crime?  No, you haven't."

The Curmudgeon prides himself on sorting the wheat of truth from the chaff of mere speculation, so allow me to back that statement up with a little research.

I did a simple google search of the phrase, "how many crimes are reported by illegal immigrants."  Below is a list of the hits that revealed statistics on that matter:

0.

Nada.  Zilch.  Not one.

However, I got numerous hits reporting statistics on the number of crimes committed by illegal immigrants.  (And please note that I don't necessarily subscribe to the fear-mongering notion that all illegal immigrants come here to commit crimes.  To me, the matter is moot: they committed a crime just by coming here.  That's what "illegal" means.)

I did unearth a report by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) that spoke to the reporting of crimes by illegal immigrants, however.  Before we review that, let's take a candid look at the CIS.

Its detractors claim that it has "extremist nativist views and ... ties to white supremacy groups."

Let's just note that the CIS' board chair is former U.S. Attorney Peter Nunez (a Hispanic) and the board includes Frank Morris, former Executive Director of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation.

This is what the report had to say:

"Supporters of keeping U.S. immigration at high levels argue, with apparently convincing evidence, that immigrants as a whole are no more crime-prone than the native-born. Yet such an appraisal invites an age-old question: What's wrong with this picture? How is that the foreign-born as a whole, according to several studies, represent no statistical anomaly, yet so much other evidence indicates they are responsible for a wave of individual and organized crime? The explanation, this report argues, is that much of the crime, a lot more than structured studies would suggest, isn't being reported. For one thing, immigrants are victims of crimes committed by fellow immigrants (all the more likely to be hidden from view if the assailant is a family member or close relative), and are often too scared, bound by custom, or fearful of deportation. This tendency may be heightened by the insularity of certain immigrant cultures, especially where concentrated in low-income neighborhoods. Many foreign-born criminals either hide within our nation's borders or operate outside of them. And the FBI's crime figures reflect state and local crime reports, which often omit any mention of an offender's national identity."

Note that this paragraph is intended to argue that illegal immigrants may actually commit more crimes than the statistics show.  Again, I'm not about fear-mongering on that point.  But note that the basis for that argument includes this nugget:

"Much of the crime ... isn't being reported."

By legal U.S. citizens or by illegal immigrants.  Why?

1. Illegal immigrants are often the target of crimes committed by other illegal immigrants, and thus they are scared to report them for fear of retaliation against the victim.
2. Some of the crimes are committed by family members or close relatives.
3. The insularity of certain immigrant cultures makes them less likely to report crimes committed by members of their own culture - in other words, they look out for their own, as a matter of cultural mores.

That last point is the kicker.  The study expands on these points:

"Many immigrant crimes are not reported, and possibly in greater proportion than the crimes that the U.S.-born commit. Many victims of immigrant criminals fear reporting crimes to the police because their victimizers are of the same nationality, and thus are more likely to retaliate in ways that would dissuade the victim from calling police."

It also cited a 1990 DoJ survey that found that Hispanics were less likely to report crimes than non-Hispanics, reporting crimes at less than half the rate of crimes that went unreported, even though the Hispanic victimization rate is higher than for the population as a whole.  (This includes legal as well as illegal Hispanic immigrants, but the point is that the cultural mores of the Hispanic population mean that, in general, they are less likely to report crimes, especially those committed by other Hispanics.)

This is not an indictment of Hispanics, nor does it reflect any bias against that ethnicity, for I harbor none.  It actually saddens me that, while they are more likely to be victims of crime than the general population, they are reluctant to report those crimes.

The point of all this is that the argument that we need to maintain sanctuary cities so that illegal immigrants feel comfortable reporting crimes by other illegal immigrants is a straw man.  That reporting isn't taking place today, and wasn't taking place more than 25 years ago.  Why should we expect it to suddenly begin taking place today?