On Jan. 27, 2024 a group of seven immigrants were video taped beating up on two police officers in Times Square. Eventually several were arrested but then released on their own recognize, which simply means that they were released, without the requirement of posting bail. The public, and many police officers were in an uproar. I too believe that if you commit a crime you should do the time. Beating up on law enforcement while being undocumented is asinine, and yes I too believe that they should have been detained and gone through the normal criminal justice process.
That being said, that the media is blowing it up out of porportion is abhorrent. The Republican Party is seizing on that story and running horrible campaign ads insinuating that all crime in the United States of America is perpetrated by undocumented immigrants. This is reminiscent of the Willie Horton ad used during the 1988 Presidential Race. In 1988 George H. Bush and the Republicans created a horrible, racist ad using a convict named Willie Horton to strike fear into the populace. For those old enough to remember that ad was used against Michael Dukakis. Horton was an African-American prisoner in Massachusetts who, while released on a furlough program, raped a white Maryland woman and bound and stabbed her boyfriend. Bush’s campaign and supporters cited the case as evidence that his Democratic opponent, Gov. Michael S. Dukakis of Massachusetts, was insufficiently tough on crime.
That is what Republicans are doing in this, the 2024 Presidential race. This time the target is the undocumented immigrant. While there may be some immigrants committing crimes, like those that beat up those two police offices, and a band of immigrants arrested for robbing and assaulting women in New York City this week, the fact of the matter is that there is no immigrant crime wave. There are fewer crimes committed by undocumented immigrants than there are murders committed by white men.
Just last week Justin Mohn, a white male American Citizen, was arrested for beheading his father, and posting a video of this crime on social media.
In 2023 Alex Murdaugh, a white male American Citizen, was sentenced to life in prison for murdering his wife and son.
On August 2023 Robert Gregory Bowers, a white male American Citizen was sentenced to death by lethal injection for the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting in which he killed eleven people and wounded six.
On February 2023 Payton S. Gendron a white male American Citizen was sentenced to life in prison without parole for shooting 13 black people in a Buffalo New York Supermarket.
The list goes on. The vast majority of mass shootings in schools, movie theaters, bowling allies, discotec’s, supermarkets, and college campuses over the past 25 years (the first such horrific shooting took place on April 20, 1999 at the Columbine High School, in Columbine, Colorado) were perpetrated by white male American Citizens. So to blame all undocumented immigrants for the crimes committed by a handful of undocumented immigrants would be like blaming all mass shootings on all white male American Citizens. Not all white male American Citizens are school shooters, but almost all school shootings, and the majority of all mass murders have been perpetrated by white male American Citizens and not by undocumented immigrants.