California Prison Early Release Plan Won't Be Delayed, Supreme Court Rules

The title for my commentary was borrowed from the news report that was posted August 2, 2013, by the Huffington Post. While neither the title for the article nor the material contained in the article even mentioned immigration, in point of fact, this is an immigration story.

Advocates for massive immigration amnesty programs, such as Comprehensive Immigration Reform, paint glowing images of illegal aliens, ignoring the reality that a significant percentage of illegal aliens come to ply their criminal trades in the United States, while others are fugitives from justice in their countries who come to the U.S. with the hope of evading the “long arm of the law.”

“Sanctuary cities” and “sanctuary states” run interference for criminal aliens, shielding them from detection from ICE and enabling them to remain in the U.S. Of course the administration has gone to extraordinary lengths to not enforce immigration laws, further exacerbating the problem.

Several years ago I participated in a debate on “Fox & Friends” about the sanctuary policies of San Francisco. Prisons were expunging the criminal histories of criminal aliens, making deportation impossible for some criminal aliens.

What I said then is just as relevant today.

Many members of violent gangs are aliens. The reality is that, when Mexican drug cartels and other transnational criminal organizations from countries around the world set up shop in the U.S., they send their thugs from their respective countries to run these criminal enterprises in the U.S.

Leaders of criminal organizations want to work with people they know and trust. Consequently, they work with criminals they have known for a long period of time in their home countries. By sending their fellow countrymen to the U.S. to run their criminal organizations, they can keep them “in line” from siphoning money from the organization or otherwise “straying” by threatening violence against family members of those “employees.”

It has been estimated that nationally approximately 30 percent of the inmates in federal prisons are foreign born. In some states the percentage of foreign-born inmates is far higher.

Incredibly, on November 13, 2012, a news report appeared on television station KSWT-13 entitled: New California prison program helps foreign-born inmates get diploma.

The story showed how the Mexican Consul convinced authorities at a Californian prison to provide education and high school diplomas to alien inmates.

Consider this quote from the report:

The government of Mexico has always been concerned for the safety, health and education of its residents,” says Mexican consulate, Gina Andrea Cruz Blackledge. “Not just Mexicans but everyone from Latin America. With this program we want to make sure that the inmates have the tools to succeed when they are released, whether they are allowed to stay in the United States or if they are indeed deported.

There was nothing in the report about who was paying for the education. While it is true that an education can help cut recidivism rates, an even more effective method of reducing recidivism is to deport aliens who are convicted of committing felonies after they serve their prison sentences.

Recidivist criminal aliens who are not removed from the U.S. victimize more people and then, when they are arrested again, add to prison overcrowding in California and elsewhere. Rather than seek to deport more criminal aliens, it would appear that, in California, dangerous criminals are about to be set free, further endangering public safety.