Measured but not reported

From Michael Rushford.

MS13 Killers Charged in LA: A federal grand jury indicted 22 members of the notorious MS 13 gang with murder last week. CBS News reports that most of the members of the Fulton Clique chapter of the gang were teenagers who face charges of murdering seven people, some of whom were hacked to death with machetes. Police report that MS 13 members are responsible for 24 murders in the Los Angeles area over the past two years. While CBS somehow missed this, the LA Times reports that 19 of the 22 gang members were illegal aliens.

86% of the arrestees for a violent felony were illegal immigrants. That seems pertinent.

Of course such information flows into and colors the immigration debate. It should not be determinative but it is pertinent.

It is hard to get a read on the degree to which illegal immigrants drive crime. Some claim little or no impact, others says the same as native born, others indicate they are a material influencer.

I have no real idea. Most crime is local and yet that is where the data is the haziest. We know at the Federal level there is a measurable issue with illegal immigrants accounting for 20-30% all federal arrests for crime. But federal numbers, while more accurate are minuscule compared to local numbers. Illegal immigrants are estimated to be about 3% of the total population suggesting that they have an outsized impact on crime if we compare only to federal numbers. However, given that most imprisonments for crime are at the state, county, municipal level, those are the numbers we really need and don't have.

But that is a separate and long running issue. It is shameful that CBS, being charitable, missed that 86% of the arrestees were illegal.