Republicans Decry ‘Deadly’ Policy as Report Shows Illegal Immigrants Committing New Crimes

Roughly one in six illegal immigrants is re-arrested on criminal charges within three years of release, according to new government data being released Tuesday.

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The findings, obtained by Fox News, are contained in reports by the Republican-controlled House Judiciary Committee and nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. They are the result of the committee’s subpoena request for Department of Homeland Security records from October 2008 to July 2011.

The information was analyzed by the CRS, which also broke down the information for criminal immigrants — legal immigrants who committed crimes and were arrested again over the three-year period. Together, the two groups also had a roughly one-in-six recidivism rate.

The records show 276,412 reported charges against illegal and criminal immigrants over that three-year period as identified by Secure Communities, a federal program that essentially attempts to make best use of resources by identifying and prioritizing which illegal immigrants pose the biggest threat to public safety and should be arrested or deported.

Of the 160,000 people in the database, more than 26,000 were re-arrested — accounting for nearly 58,000 crimes and violations.

They allegedly committed nearly 8,500 drunken-driving offenses and more than 6,000 drug-related violations. The records also show major criminal offenses, which included murder, battery, rape, kidnapping and nearly 3,000 thefts. Roughly 2 percent of the crimes included carjacking, child molestation, lynching and torture, according to the 13-page Congressional Research Service report.

“The Obama administration could have prevented these senseless crimes by enforcing our immigration laws,” the committee chairman, Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, said. “But President Obama continues to further his anti-enforcement agenda while innocent Americans suffer the consequences.”

The report showed that more than 7,000 of those re-arrested were illegal immigrants. Among their charges were 19 murders, three attempted murders and 142 sex crimes.

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