TITLE: US Citizens Were 80.2 Percent of Crossers with Fentanyl at Ports of Entry from 2019 to 2024
https://www.cato.org/blog/us-citizens-were-802-crossers-fentanyl-ports-entry-2019-2024
EXCERPT: Many people wrongly believe that immigration is critical to the illicit supply of fentanyl in the United States. However, proponents of this view have offered little more than speculation to support it. New data obtained by the Cato Institute via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request calls this belief into question. The new dataset shows that US citizens comprised 80 percent of individuals caught with fentanyl during border crossings at ports of entry from 2019 to 2024.
The FOIA dataset contains individual records regarding each person encountered by officials at US ports of entry from whom fentanyl was seized. Figure 1 shows the citizenship of individuals arrested with fentanyl from fiscal year (FY) 2019 to 2024, as of June. Overall, the dataset reveals that out of 9,473 individuals associated with a fentanyl seizure, 7,598 were US citizens (80.2 percent).
The data are most relevant to understanding fentanyl seizure activity because the vast majority of fentanyl is seized at ports of entry, not between the ports where people cross illegally. Figure 2 breaks down fentanyl seizures by location. From FY 2015 to 2024, 88 percent of all fentanyl was seized at ports of entry, basically the same as in FY 2024. Another 4 percent was seized at vehicle checkpoints on highways after the ports. Only 8 percent was seized by Border Patrol on patrol, and many of those seizures came from vehicle stops as well. The seizure data supports the qualitative assessments of the Drug Enforcement Agency, Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and the Office of National Drug Policy based on investigative work. Even Bill Barr, while serving as attorney general under President Donald Trump, agreed.
Drug trafficking organizations hire US citizens because they are guaranteed the right of entry into the United States and are subject to less scrutiny at ports than individuals without citizenship. Data from the US Sentencing Commission reinforces the impression that US citizens are the primary method for fentanyl cross-border drug trafficking. From 2018 to 2023, US citizens accounted for 2,315 of the 2,905 convicted drug traffickers in southwest border districts (80 percent). The number of US citizens involved in fentanyl trafficking has risen more rapidly than it has for other traffickers since 2018.
TITLE: Trump's lies about undocumented immigrants hide the truth: They pay their share of taxes
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2024/08/09/immigrants-pay-taxes-trump-immigration-lies/74697353007/
EXCERPTS: In 2015, when Donald Trump began his campaign for the presidency, he often touted claims that undocumented immigrants were “bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists” to appeal to what would become his MAGA base. It wasn’t the first or last time that Trump and other Republicans attacked undocumented immigrants.
False claims that undocumented immigrants are more likely to commit crimes than citizens or are a danger to public health help to fuel border security measures that endanger migrants' lives far more than ours.
No matter the political nonsense you hear spouted about immigration, legal and otherwise, here's the truth: America needs more immigrants, documented and otherwise.
If you aren’t already mad after reading the preceding sentence, hold my beer. Immigrants coming into America boost our economy. And undocumented immigrants in the United States play an astonishing role in strengthening the nation through their substantial tax contributions.
Yes, they pay taxes, lots of taxes, to the tune of nearly $100 billion dollars in 2022.
And here's a truth that [Texas Gov. Greg] Abbott [doesn’t] acknowledge: According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, in Texas in 2022, undocumented immigrants paid $4.9 billion in state and local taxes.
That was more than the combined taxes collected in Texas for alcohol, cigarette/tobacco, hotel occupancy and utility.
Undocumented immigrants pay taxes on goods and services, on homes that they own or rent and on the income they earn. That money helps to pay for essential services such as education and health care.
Misinformation that immigrants do not pay taxes or that they drain public resources is not only untrue but also detrimental to societal cohesion.
TITLE: How these Northeastern researchers are rewriting the immigration-crime narrative
https://news.northeastern.edu/2024/08/08/magazine/immigrant-crime-impacts/
EXCERPTS: When Ramiro Martinez began his study of Latino crime in the United States 30 years ago, he thought he knew what to expect.
“I assumed that places that had more immigrants would have more homicides,” says Martinez, a Northeastern University professor of sociology, criminology and criminal justice. “That was the [common] assumption at that time point in the ’80s and ’90s.
“And so when we started looking at that first run of data, I thought there was something wrong.”
The data showed that immigrants — legal and illegal — were having a positive effect on their communities. Those findings are collected in his book, “Latino Homicide: Immigration, Violence, and Community.”
“We found something that was opposite to what we thought,” Martinez says. “We found that more Latinos meant less violence in many communities across the United States.”
Martinez and his Northeastern colleague Jacob Stowell, who rank among the leading experts in the field, say their research over the past three decades has disproved assertions that immigration exposes American communities to increases in crime.
“There aren’t a whole lot of things in my understanding that are the complete opposite of what people believe,” Stowell, a Northeastern associate professor of criminology and criminal justice, says of the immigration debate. “This is one of them.”
“The picture is generally the same: It appears to be the story that more immigration of any kind — legal or otherwise — is tied to lower levels of crime,” Stowell says. “There is no compelling empirical evidence that [illegal] immigration is positively associated with crime.”
The research efforts of Martinez and Stowell have been in line with studies by fellow scholars affirming the positives of immigration. The painstaking work requires data from the U.S. census to be matched with neighborhood crime reports.
Stowell says the anti-immigrant language of today echoes back throughout U.S. history.
“The things people used to be saying about Polish immigrants are the same things they’re saying today about Latino immigrants,” Stowell says, citing previous anti-immigration rhetoric that scapegoated Germans, Italians, Irish and other ethnicities.
“There’s a supplanting of one group with another when people start talking about things like the undoing of the fabric of America at its core,” he says. “These broadly based statements get a lot of traction because of their grandiosity and not because of their substance.”
Stowell says it’s important to note the difference between first-generation immigrants and their offspring who are raised in the U.S. culture.
“For the children of immigrants, their [criminal] patterns look much different from immigrants — they look more like the patterns of native-born Americans,” Stowell says. “In this sense becoming more American means becoming more criminal.
SEE ALSO:
Trump again says rest of the world is deliberately sending its criminals and lunatics to America
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/trump-again-says-rest-of-the-world-is-deliberately-sending-its-criminals-and-lunatics-to-america/articleshow/112408845.cms
Texas Gov. Abbott directs hospitals to collect immigration status of patients
https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2024/08/09/Texas-hospitals-immigration-status/5421723186654/
US states sue over Biden rule extending health insurance to DACA immigrants
https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-states-sue-over-biden-rule-extending-health-insurance-daca-immigrants-2024-08-08/
It’s illegal to hire immigrants who aren’t authorized to work but the law is difficult to enforce
https://www.daytondailynews.com/business/its-illegal-to-hire-immigrants-who-arent-authorized-to-work-but-the-law-is-difficult-to-enforce/SJ6YOHLEKVBBNES5RCS4VNATF4/