US Study challenges immigration fears
Posted on Monday, February 25, 2008
US Study challenges immigration fears
Immigrants are far less likely than the average US-born citizen to commit crime in California, the most populous state in the United States, according to a newly-released report.
People born outside the United States make up about 35% of California's adult population but account for about 17% of the adult prison population, the report by the Public Policy Institute of California showed.
According to the report's authors the findings suggest that long-standing fears of immigration as a threat to public safety are unjustified. The report also noted that US-born adult men are incarcerated at a rate more than 2 1/2 times greater than that of foreign-born men.
"Our research indicates that limiting immigration, requiring higher educational levels to obtain visas, or spending more money to increase penalties against criminal immigrants will have little impact on public safety," said Kristin Butcher, co-author of the report and associate professor of economics at Wellesley College.
The study did not differentiate between documented immigrants and illegal immigrants.
The question of what to do about the millions of undocumented workers living in the United States has been one of the major issues in the US presidential election. Mexico, which accounts for a high proportion of illegal immigrants in California, was deeply disappointed at the US Congress' failure to pass President George Bush's overhaul of immigration laws last year.
When Butcher and her co-author, Anne Morrison Piehl, associate professor of economics at Rutgers University, considered all those committed to institutions including prison, jails, halfway houses and the like, they found an even greater disparity.
Among men 18 to 40, the population most likely to be in institutions because of criminal activity, the report found that in California, US-born men were institutionalized 10 times more often than foreign-born men (4.2% vs. 0.42%).
Among other findings in the report, non-citizen men from Mexico 18 to 40 -- a group disproportionately likely to have entered the United States illegally -- are more than eight times less likely than US-born men in the same age group to be in a correctional institution (0.48% vs. 4.2%).
"From a public safety standpoint, there would be little reason to further limit immigration, to favor entry by high-skilled immigrants, or to increase penalties against criminal immigrants," the report said.
NEWARK, N.J. — Authorities have identified a fourth suspect in the execution-style killings of three college students in Newark last weekend, issuing an arrest warrant Saturday for 24-year-old Rodolfo Godinez.
Godinez, a Nicaraguan national who also uses the name Gomez, is considered "a principal player" in the case, Newark Police Director Garry McCarthy told The Star-Ledger of Newark.
Saturday's developments follow a shocking turn in the investigation Friday. On Friday, FOX 5 New York reported that two of the victims may have been sexually assaulted before they were killed by an illegal immigrant with a violent criminal history.
According to FOX 5 New York, a sexual attack may have occurred before Terrance Aeriel, Iofemi Hightower and Dashon Harvey were shot to death, and a fourth victim, 19-year old Natasha Aerial, was critically wounded.
The suspect in the sexual assault, Peruvian national Jose Carranza, is an illegal immigrant previously charged with raping a 5-year-old. Carranza surrendered to Newark Mayor Cory Booker on Thursday and plead not guilty to to three counts of murder and one charge each of attempted murder and robbery in Essex County Superior Court on Friday.
TAHLEQUAH DAILY PRESS (Oklahoma) August 23, 2007 Charges were filed Wednesday in connection with the kicking death of a Coweta toddler. Michael Hernandez was ordered held in the Wagoner County Jail without bond. He's charged with killing Kelynn Byrd, 2, earlier this month. The toddler's mother was Hernandez's girlfriend. Investigators said after Hernandez and the boy's mother had a fight, she left the house, leaving the child with Hernandez. The victim died from blunt chest and abdominal trauma. Hernandez allegedly confessed to repeatedly kicking Kelynn in the chest. Authorities contacted the Mexican consulate after Hernandez's court appearance because he is in the country illegally.
“Zina died from a blow to the head”
Terapon Adhahn (Thai illegal alien) charged with kidnapping, raping, and killing 12-year-old Zina Linnik.
Prosecutors charged a convicted sex offender Monday with kidnapping, raping and killing Zina Linnik, a 12-year-old girl who was snatched from an alley behind her family’s home during a July 4th fireworks celebration. According to the charging documents, Terapon Dang Adhahn led investigators to the girl’s body.
Zina died from a blow to the head, according to papers filed in Superior Court. Her body was found near Silver Lake in rural Pierce County, and authorities say Adhahn’s DNA was found on her.
During their investigation, detectives said they uncovered two other victims: one who was kidnapped on her way to school in 2000 and another who lived with Adhahn as a teen. Adhahn is charged with rape in those cases, as well as failing to register as a sex offender.
Wreck suspect here illegally, officials say (killed family of three)
By MIKE GLENN Houston Chronicle - August 2007
A man accused of causing a fiery wreck that killed a family of three on the East Freeway is in the country illegally, authorities said. Juan Felix Salinas, 42, voluntarily returned to his home in Nuevo Leon, Mexico, two years ago, officials said. But he returned to the U.S., eventually making his way back to the Houston area.
Salinas remained in police custody Monday, charged with three counts of intoxication manslaughter in the deaths of Tenisha Williams, 26; her husband, S.J. Williams; and her son, Xavier Brown, 2. His bail has been set at $90,000 — $30,000 for each death.
Houston police said Salinas was speeding and rapidly changing lanes about 8:30 p.m. Saturday when he rear-ended a Toyota Corolla in the 8700 block of Interstate 10. The Toyota caught fire and eventually was engulfed in flames. The family was pronounced dead at the scene. Salinas, who suffered minor injuries in the wreck, had a blood-alcohol level of .24 — three times the .08 legal limit for intoxication in Texas.
When the van slammed into the Toyota, Salinas had been free on bond from a March 31 family violence incident in Jacinto City. The case remains open, authorities said.
On Saturday, bystanders struggled to save the young family. Some used hand- held fire extinguishers to hold back the flames while others attempted to pry open the doors. Felinda Williams said she was grateful to everyone who tried to save her daughter, grandson and son-in-law. "At least somebody cared enough," a grieving Williams said Monday. "They put themselves in danger trying to help them." Williams said she will closely follow the case against Salinas as it progresses. "When he's in court, I'm going to be in court," she said. "He tore a whole family apart."
Best friends killed in crash in Va. Beach
11:18 PM EDT on Monday, April 2, 2007
A man charged with killing two best friends in a Friday night crash admitted in a Va. Beach court Monday he's in the country illegally. Alfredo Ramos, 22, is charged with two counts of aggravated involuntary manslaughter. 13News was in court where we learned Ramos doesn't speak English and so used an interpreter.
Police said Ramos was speeding westbound on Virginia Beach Boulevard when he slammed into the rear of a car stopped at the red light at Kings Grant Road.
Allison Kunhardt, 17, and Tessa Tranchant, 16, were pinned in Kunhardt's Plymouth Duster in the 10:35 p.m. collision. Emergency personnel pulled them out of the car and rushed them to the hospital, where they later died.
Police told 13News Kunhardt was a student First Colonial High School and Tranchant was a student at Kellam High School.
"I just separated from the military. I’ve just been home two weeks. I just wanted to spend time with my family," said Dylan Tranchant, Tessa Trenchant’s brother. Dylan Tranchant just got home from the war in Iraq, and had to identify his sister’s body over the weekend.
Dozens of relatives and friends gathered Sunday to console each other and to remember the girls who were inseparably close friends. The girls became close friends when Tessa's mother started dating Allison's father. "They were definitely inseparable," said Allison's father, David Kunhardt. "I've never seen a closer friendship. They would finish each other's sentences."
Police said they believe Ramos had been drinking before the crash. (Ramos had already been convicted of DUI, plus 3 other public intoxication arrests, but identity theft, driving without a license, etc.)
Police also said additional charges may be filed against Ramos, who lives in the 100 block of Trace Court. Commonwealth's Attorney Harvey Bryant says it's not unusual for police to know someone's in the country illegally and not send them back. He says it requires three DUI's before immigration officials are notified.
Allison Kunhardt's father thinks that needs to change. "Illegal means illegal. It makes no sense, you get three DUI's before you're deported. It's not baseball, three strikes you're out. You're dealing with people's lives," said David Kunhardt.
Arrest made in woman's dragging death in Colorado
CASTLE ROCK, Colo. (AP-Sep 2006) A man was arrested in the gruesome dragging death of a woman after a stained and tattered photograph of him was found at the crime scene, police said Wednesday. Jose Luis Rubi-Nava, 36, was arrested Tuesday night on suspicion of murder and jailed without bail. Investigators said they were still trying to identify the victim, who was dragged behind a vehicle with a rope, leaving a trail of blood more than a mile long.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman Carl Rusnok said agents believe Rubi-Nava is an illegal immigrant from Mexico. At a court appearance Wednesday afternoon, Rubi-Nava listened through a translator as District Judge Paul A. King formally told him the charge he faces.
Neighbors discovered the woman's body before dawn. Her face was unrecognizable and an orange tow rope was around her neck, said Nancy Foley, who lives nearby. An autopsy indicated the woman died of asphyxiation and head injuries from being dragged. The trail of blood led from Interstate 25 to the woman's body, which was found on a street lined with large ranch
Teenage Victim of Brutal Assault Remains In Serious Condition
-style homes on spacious lots. On Wednesday, highway crews were spreading fresh tar over the roads to cover the traces of blood.
(June 30, 2006)—The 18-year-old Limestone County (Texas) girl who was subjected to what county Sheriff Dennis Wilson described as “two-hours of hell” as two men raped and stabbed her repeatedly as they drove down rural roads remained in serious condition Friday at Scott & White Hospital in Temple. Meanwhile the second of the two illegal immigrants arrested in connection with the attack was transferred to the Limestone County Jail. U.S. Marshals arrested Noel Darwin Hernandez of Honduras at a Waco bus station as he tried to leave the country, authorities said. The second man, Javier Guzman Martinez, 17, of Mexico was arrested in Limestone County.Both men had Mexia addresses, authorities said. They’re charged with aggravated sexual assault and aggravated kidnapping. The attack happened late Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning on a rural road near Coolidge. Two men used their vehicle to run the teenager’s SUV off the road and then abducted her. They drove down rural roads for several hours, stabbing and raping the girl repeatedly, authorities said, and then left her in a ditch to die. But bleeding profusely, the girl somehow made her way to a house a half-mile away where she awakened residents with a faint knock on the front door. The residents of the home are both volunteer firefighters. They treated the girl for shock and called 911.
Ax Murder Of A 9-Year-Old Boy By Illegal Alien Prompted by Innocent Comment about Wobbly Tire
June, 2006. Fulton County Police hope to have more details about the vicious ax murder of a 9-year-old boy Monday night after questioning two juveniles. Police arrested the pair late Tuesday after spotting them in a stolen car that may be connected to the crime.
Police believe young Jordin Paulder was brutally murdered because of a harmless comment he made while playing in the parking lot of his father's apartment complex in Sandy Springs on Monday night. As a car drove by with four or five men inside, police say Jordin called out to the driver that something was wrong with a wheel. According to police, one of the men in the car then became enraged and made an obscene gesture at Jordin. "The child apologized to the individual," said Corporal Gary Syblis. "The individual came out and ended up axing the child to death." Although they don't know for sure who committed the gruesome crime, police say right now all signs point to 21-year-old Santos Cabrera. Cabrera was shot and killed by police after he ran from the crime scene and assaulted an officer. Investigators said two young boys who were playing with Jordin witnessed the attack --including Jordin's 7-year-old brother.
Adrian Zuniga: Brutal Illegal Alien Rapist at large in North Carolina
LOCUST, N.C. -- (June 2006) A 16-year-girl is out of the hospital and receiving counseling after she was brutally attacked and raped just feet from her home in the Stanly County town of Locust. Police said the man suspected of committing the assault has several aliases, but Adrian Zuniga is the name he's used most recently. According to officers, Zuniga grabbed the teen, who was a neighbor, then strangled her as he dragged her by the neck into some woods on Wednesday. He then raped the young woman, police said. Marsha Drye lives in the neighborhood near Lakeside Drive. "It's horrible, to be in your own area where you live and play, and then to be dragged into some woods," she said. Immigration officials confirmed through police Thursday that the suspect in the attack is an illegal alien. His papers used fictitious numbers. "It's horrible enough if he wasn’t an illegal immigrant, but to be illegally here in this country and commit these crimes just goes back to one of the basic problems we have here," Drye said. Locust Police Chief Mike Haigler said the suspect could still be in the Charlotte area staying with friends, and he fears the man won't stop with this assault. "He's out there somewhere. The probability is that he's going to commit these crimes again," he said.
"Railway Killer" Angel Maturino Resendiz Executed (He killed at least 15 Americans.)
(June 2006, Texas) The Mexican drifter known as the “Railroad Killer” was executed for the slaying of physician Claudia Benton 7½ years ago. She was killed during a deadly spree in 1998 and 1999 that earned Resendiz a spot on the FBI's Most Wanted list as authorities searched for a murderer who slipped across the U.S. border and roamed the country by freight train. Benton was stabbed with a kitchen knife, bludgeoned with a 2-foot bronze statue and raped in 1998 in her Houston home, just down the street from a railroad track. Authorities realized they were pursuing a serial killer when DNA evidence tied Resendiz to Benton's murder and the killings of a church pastor and his wife who were beaten with a sledgehammer as they slept in their house near tracks outside Houston.
The court rejected an appeal by the Houston-based consul general of Mexico questioning the Mexican national's competency and challenging the constitutionality of the lethal injection process as cruel and unusual punishment. Capital punishment is not allowed in Mexico. “We do look after the rights of Mexican nationals,” Consul General Carlos Gonzalez said. “We watch to make sure the law is applied fairly to a Mexican national.” Mexico's Foreign Relations Department protested the execution.
FBI special agent Don K. Clark says that the manhunt was complicated by the fact that Resendez had "no permanent address" while continuing to travel unchecked "throughout the United States, Mexico and Canada."
Dallas Police Officer Brian Jackson became another open borders statistic on Nov. 13 when he was shot and killed by illegal alien Juan Lizcano.
Lizcano had become drunk and went to the home of his ex-girfriend to threaten her. As the police pursued Lizcano after he fled the woman's home, he shot Officer Jackson, who died later in the hospital.
Officer Jackson was remembered by his fellow police as someone who loved his job and always went the extra mile. "From Day One, he just enjoyed police work and took pride in it. And he always wanted to learn everything he could. He was very dedicated," Officer Carcone said. "He went above and beyond. He'd stay late. He'd cover anybody. He was always looking to help everybody he could."
Jackson was 28 and had gotten married just two months ago.
Jose Ramirez is every American father's nightmare. The illegal alien from El Salvador beat up a 15-year-old girl after whistling at her. He broke her nose, fractured a bone in her face and produced cuts requring 30 stitches. The man worked in construction in Spotsylvania, Virginia, where the attack occurred, and resisted arrest to the point where police had to taser him. The 28-year-old Ramirez of Prince William County was charged with aggravated malicious wounding and abduction with the intent to defile. Both charges carry potential life sentences. He is being held with no bond.
Jose Raul Pena is shown here with his daughter Suzie. An illegal alien from El Salvador earlier deported for cocaine possession, he was the doting father who used the little girl as a human shield in an hours-long Los Angeles shootout with police on July 10. Pena and Suzie were both killed.
Esmerelda Nava, aged four, was recently strangled, molested and killed by an illegal alien who had been deported in 2003. The accused killer is Cornelio Rivera Zamites of Vera Cruz, Mexico, who had been residing in Gainsville, Georgia. Esmerelda went with her parents to visit the 24-year-old Zamites. At some point late Saturday night (6/25), the child's mother realized the girl was missing. A police officer found her body early the next morning in nearby woods. An article of Zamites clothing was close by and he was gone. Zamites had been deported for driving under the influence, as well as having no license or insurance. At least his illegal status was duly noted.
Donald R. Young was a Denver police officer working a second job when he was shot three times in the back and killed by an illegal alien from Mexico, Raul Garcia-Gomez. Young was providing security at Solano Ocampo, a hall used for private functions, when he was ambushed at around 1 am on Sunday May 8; another policeman was also shot but not seriously. Both men were off duty but in uniform. Detective Young was the married father of two. He was a a 12-year veteran, who had worked with the vice-narcotics and domestic violence units, and was assigned to the fugitive-bomb squad when he died.
Virginia "Jenny" Garcia was an 18-year-old college freshman when she was murdered with a butcher knife in her own house, in her own room, on her own bed allegedly by an illegal alien. The accused murderer, David Diaz Morales, whom the Austin police had earlier held in custody for child molestation, had been released rather than deported because of the city's sanctuary policy.
Vinessa Hoera was brutally murdered in February 2004 by Faustino Chavez, an illegal alien from Guatemala, when she refused his obnoxious romantic advances. He raped her at knifepoint, strangled her, then slashed her throat five times. It took police two months of searching to find her body where it had been dumped in the woods in Suffolk County, New York. The victim met Chavez in a seafood store in Westhampton Beach where they both worked. Chavez was court Feb 14, 2005, where he accepted a plea bargain in the February 2004 murder. Vinessa's distraught family did not want the additional emotional stress of a full trial. Chavez will get his official sentence of 22 years to life in prison
Melissa Dorner was only 21 when she was murdered in her own apartment in Chicago. Her friends remembered her as a "wonderful, caring human being" and many notes and flowers in remembrance were left in front of the apartment building. She graduated from Evanston High School in 2002 and worked as a hostess in a restaurant. Melissa had fought off an accused serial rapist Mario Villa a year earlier. Her strangled and beaten body was found January 24.The apparent killer is Roberto Ramirez, who is believed by police to have fled to Mexico. He was last seen in Chicago with blood on his clothes and scratches on his face.
What sort of monster could murder three children in the most brutal manner — one child was beheaded and the two others were nearly decapitated. They also suffered a variety of injuries including blunt force trauma and asphyxiation. The victims, residents of Baltimore, (l. to r.) were siblings Alexis Quezada (10) and Lucero Quezada (9) and their cousin Ricardo Espinoza (9). The two men arrested for the crime were also relatives: Policarpio Espinoza, 22, brother of the father of the two siblings, and Espinoza's cousin Adan Espinoza Canela, 17. The accused are illegal aliens as are the parents of the murdered children. Apparently the arrests were based on DNA/blood evidence.
Roberto Martinez Ruiz: Illegal alien hit and run killer.
Three weeks before Kailya Goodman turned 10, her father was killed when an illegal immigrant plowed a sport utility vehicle into his motorcycle on a Thornton street on July 1, 2004. Justin Goodman of Denver bled to death on the side of the road. He was 31. The man convicted of the hit-and-run that killed Kailya's father was Roberto Martinez-Ruiz, who had come to Colorado illegally from Mexico. He had a record of arrests in Colorado on charges of drunken driving, hit-and-run and other misdemeanors that spanned almost a decade, court records show. Not once was his name turned over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE officials told a TV reporter — not until the accident that killed Goodman. "We have that level of criminal right in our hands, and we're just letting them go," said Carol Vizzi, Justin Goodman's mother.
Illegal-Immigrant Pastor Accused Of Sex Assault, Kidnapping
Ochoa-Gomez Operates Safe Houses For Fellow Illegal Immigrants
LOUCHBUIE, Colo.(June 2006) A pastor in Brighton who operates safe houses in Colorado was arrested for allegedly kidnapping and sexual assaulting a 20-year-old man, police said Thursday.Jesus Alonso Ochoa- Gomez, a 36-year-old illegal immigrant, operated a safe house for fellow illegal immigrants in Aurora and opened another safe house in Lochbuie earlier this year.The kidnapping and sexual assault allegedly took place in the Lochbuie location, police said. On Monday, acting on an arrest warrent, Lochbuie police officers went to Ochoa-Gomez's home, but the suspect refused to open the door. Police forced themselves into the home, where Ochoa-Gomex was arrested. His pregnant wife was also at home. Ochoa-Gomez was transported to the Weld County Jail and is being held on a $25,000 bond. He is facing charges of second-degree kidnapping and sexual assault.
