Illegal Immigration is a Crime

HELP STOP ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION
Many Alien Criminals Are Not Being Removed from the United States. While many illegal aliens do not commit additional crimes once they arrive in the United States, the problem of criminal illegal aliens cannot be ignored. The criminal alien population is substantial. For example, “in Los Angeles, 95 percent of all outstanding homicide warrants and 60 percent of outstanding felony warrants are for illegal aliens.”24 And the Department of Homeland Security further estimates that 80,000 criminal illegal aliens are present in the United States and not in custody due to having absconded after failing to appear for immigration deportation proceedings.
The Financial Burdens on Taxpayers With such a large number of illegal aliens in the United States, the taxpayers bear a heavy burden. The public costs are dramatic, especially in the areas of emergency medical care and the criminal justice system.
Emergency care expenses Illegal immigrants seldom have health insurance, and instead tend to seek even the most routine medical care from hospital emergency rooms. A 2002 study of all 24 U.S. counties bordering Mexico found that hospitals provided $190 million of uncompensated emergency medical care to undocumented immigrants in the year 2000.18 And, of course, illegal aliens do not all remain in border counties; they live in every state of the nation. Some experts have estimated that the nationwide emergency medical care obligation due to illegal aliens is $1.45 billion per year.19 As discussed below (at p. 10), the federal government has provided a fraction of the reimbursement funding necessary to deal with these expenses.
Criminal justice expenses The financial burden on federal and state resources due to criminal illegal aliens is substantial, and the partial reimbursement provided to states and counties by the federal State Criminal Aliens Assistance Program (SCAAP) for incarceration is paltry compared to sustained costs. Consider the following:
• At the federal level, the total number of civil immigration cases filed in the federal courts has increased by more than 500 percent since 1992.20
• A 2001 study of the 24 counties along the U.S.-Mexico border found that the annual costs of prosecuting and incarcerating illegal aliens amounted to more than $80 million — an average of 12 percent of all county public safety expenditures.