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Migrants and Crimes

Crimes committed by migrants has been a top political debate, especially as the presidential election draws near. While some officials claim criminal activity, at least in some areas, has gone down, there are other statistics that say otherwise. In a neighborhood in Queens, for example, the New York City Police Department’s CompStat system shows crime is up more than 15% from January to April this year compared to the same time frame last year in that precinct. Robbery is up more than 40% for the same period.

Johnn Velasquez, a security guard in Manhattan who works the night shift, told NPR that crime happens a lot. “It’s an everyday thing. People on the scooters, like driving by while you’re on the phone, they’ll take it. Every day, you walk here, you don’t know what’s gonna happen.”

While not every crime can be blamed on migrants, of course, there are some very disturbing instances that likely could have been prevented if officials’ hands weren’t tied by progressive laws. As The Center Square reported, Venezuelan gang members have been arrested inside America’s interior, thousands of miles from the border. The Tren de Aragua gang is known for organizing and committing murders, money laundering and bribery, drug and arms trafficking, and kidnappings.

In March, Senators Marco Rubio and Elvira Salazar, both Republicans from Florida, asked President Joe Biden to officially mark the gang as a Transnational Criminal Organization. “Tren de Aragua is an invading criminal army from a prison in Venezuela that has spread their brutality and chaos to U.S. cities and towns,” they said. “If left unchecked, they will unleash an unprecedented reign of terror, mirroring the devastation it has already inflicted in communities throughout Central and South America, most prominently in Columbia, Chile, Ecuador, and Peru.”

Recently, ICE arrested members of the gang in New York City and Chicago, but they couldn’t deport them due to federal or local policies. On May 10, Johan Jose Cardenas Silva, who was wanted by Peruvian authorities for conspiracy, aggravated theft, and assault, was arrested. Two months earlier, the New York City Police Department officers arrested him on firearm and drug charges. However, he has a history of being arrested and released, dating back to 2022 when he was arrested for entering the US illegally.

David Antonio Calderon, an illegal alien from El Salvador with an “extensive” criminal history in his native country, was arrested and charged with murder. On May 6, authorities responded to a fire in a field in Martinsburg, West Virginia, where the burnt body of a female victim was found. Calderon is also facing charges of malicious assault in another case with three victims, two involving the use of a baseball bat and the third a stabbing.

In March, Calderon was stopped at the US-Canada border where he tried to claim asylum but was denied – allegedly because there weren’t any available beds – and was sent back to the US. Berkeley County Sheriff Rob Blair said at a press conference, “We really need to change our immigration system in this country. This is unacceptable,” referring to Calderon’s “extensive criminal history in El Salvador,” including sexual assault, murder, narcotics-related crimes, and aggravated robbery.

Joe Alfredo Maldonado is another in a long list of migrants who have allegedly committed serious crimes but manage to allude deportation. ICE officials said he entered the US at an unknown location without being inspected, admitted, or paroled by an immigration official. From El Salvadore, Maldonado was first arrested in 2014 for driving intoxicated and sentenced to 30 days in jail. On April 25, 2020, he was arrested by Prince William police “for felony forcible sodomy, by force, threat, etc., on a victim age 13 or older,” Fox News reported, and was convicted in January 2021. He was sentenced to 364 days in jail. ICE issued a detainer request in 2020, but Maldonado was released before it was submitted. He was just arrested again last week.

Josue Ruben Silva, 21, from Venezuela, who already has a long rap sheet, was arrested last week, and is facing murder charges in New York, where three people were shot and two of them died. He was first arrested in February for petty larceny in Brooklyn, then later the same month, he was charged with grand larceny and criminal possession of a loaded gun. He was put on supervised release and then had a bench warrant issued after he skipped out on the case. He went on to allegedly commit more crimes in March and April.

Notable Quotes

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has been backpedaling his stance on illegal migrants crossing the border. At first saying there wasn’t a crisis, he has since made contradictory remarks. Recently, in an interview with CBS News, the security secretary admitted what Republicans have been arguing all along – that some illegals are playing the system.

“The reality is that some people do indeed try to game the system,” Mayorkas said. “That does not speak to everyone whom we encounter, but there is an element of it, and we deal with it accordingly.”

What will next week bring us in Open Borders America?