FIRST ON FOX: Republican Sen. Jim Banks of Indiana is calling on U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel to close “critical gaps” in crime reporting that he says obscures a “serious and growing problem with immigrant crime” in America, according to a letter that was obtained by Fox News Digital.
Banks suggested that a lack of immigration status reporting by local and state authorities has resulted in the amount of crime committed by illegal aliens being drastically underreported, according to the letter that was sent to Bondi and Patel on Tuesday.
As such, he urged the FBI and DOJ to encourage local and state law enforcement to collect arrestees’ immigration status, national origin and ethnicity by reforming the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), in which most agencies participate.
Currently, the NIBRS only includes ethnicity as an optional element, and it does not require law enforcement to collect an arrestee’s immigration status or national origin.
Banks also pointed out that though the DOJ collects some aggregate statistics about the citizenship of state prison populations, it does not distinguish between noncitizens with legal status and illegal aliens. He said it also generally leaves out offenders in local jails, who make up approximately one-third of the inmate population.
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Closing these gaps in reporting, Banks said, would be in line with President Donald Trump’s April executive order “Strengthening and Unleashing America’s Law Enforcement to Pursue Criminals and Protect Innocent Citizens,” which directed the DOJ and appropriate federal agencies to “increase the investment in and collection, distribution, and uniformity of crime data across jurisdictions.”
He pointed out that while the Bureau of Prisons and U.S. Sentencing Commission track the national origin of federal offenders, local and state authorities, who respond and track the vast majority of crime happening across the country, largely do not track that information.
“The overwhelming majority of crime happens at the state and local level. Most violent crimes, most property crimes, and many drug offenses fall under local jurisdiction,” he went on, adding that “the responsibility for reporting the citizenship status of offenders falls largely on states and localities—but they generally do not track this data,” he wrote.
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Banks wrote that “even though many individuals entering the country have a violent past, critical gaps in crime data reporting keep the American people from understanding when and how often these individuals and other aliens commit crimes once they are here.”
He pointed to a 2018 study by the Center of Immigration Studies that found that between 2011 and 2016, 21 percent of those convicted of non-immigration crimes were non-citizens, which is 2.5 times their share of the population. Drawing from data from the U.S. Sentencing Commission, the study found that of those convicted of federal crimes between 2011 and 2016, 44.2 percent were not U.S. citizens, and 21.4 percent if immigration crimes were excluded. According to the study, non-citizens at the time were only 8.4 percent of the adult population, with about 4 percent being illegal immigrants and about 4 percent being legal immigrants.
The study further found that despite being only 8.4 percent of the population at the time, immigrants accounted for 42.4 percent of kidnapping convictions, 31.5 percent of drug convictions and 22.9 percent of money laundering convictions.
“The United States has a serious and growing problem with immigrant crime. Of course, every person who enters the United States illegally commits a crime. But those who cross our borders are increasingly likely to threaten the lives and safety of American citizens,” wrote Banks.
“Any crime committed by an illegal alien is one crime too many, but the American people and their elected representatives deserve to know how many of these crimes are happening, and to set immigration policy accordingly.”
