Immigrants are Often the Victims of Crimes

Committed by Transnational Gangs and Illegal Aliens

By Michael Cutler, Senior Special Agent, INS (Ret.), CAPS Senior Fellow

November 16, 2012

All too often, romanticized accounts about how illegal aliens are simply seeking their share of the “American Dream” fail to deal with the true stories about the criminals and their victims. Often the opponents of immigration law enforcement play on the compassion of Americans, convincing them that immigration law enforcement is unfair and racist.

A recent ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) news release entitled, “Man pleads guilty to luring 15-year-old girl into prostitution” illustrates the harsh and frequent brutal reality of illegal immigration.

The news release had a deceptive title that did not even mention anything about immigration or the fact that the thug who pleaded guilty of coercing a 15 year old girl into being a prostitute, was a 29 year old illegal alien from Guatemala who is nearly twice the age of the girl mentioned in the title of the news release.

It is especially incomprehensible that while the title of the news release ignored the immigration component of the story that, in point of fact, most if not all of those who were reported on in the report were, in fact aliens and that ICE is the federal agency that bears the primary responsibility for enforcing America’s immigration laws.

According to the release, since 2008 or earlier, hundreds of young Hispanic women, including a number of underage minors were coerced into becoming prostitutes.  Reportedly the criminal alien in this case, Julio Cesar Revolorio Ramos, was a part of a large conspiracy that operated in Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C. and had a direct involvement with a particularly pernicious and violent transnational gang, MS-13.

Here is an excerpt from the news release that explains how this prostitution ring operated:

Ramos admitted in court that he was part of a conspiracy that prostituted Hispanic women and girls – most of whom were illegal aliens – in Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia. He advertised the prostitution business by handing out business cards purporting to be for plumbing, landscaping or snow removal business, but which contained a telephone number a customer could call to obtain sexual services from a prostitute. Ramos and others would hand out these cards to those congregating at sites for day laborers, Hispanic restaurants, and check cashing stores in Virginia.

What is important to note is that while nothing was said about the customers for these prostitutes, that given where business cards were distributed, it is extremely likely that these customers were, themselves, illegal aliens.

This is a point I have raised in Congressional hearings and in other venues — illegal immigration is not a “victimless crime!”

The most likely victims of crimes committed by transnational criminals and transnational gangs are the members of the ethnic immigration communities.  This holds true of every ethnicity.  This is not based on mere conjecture but in my personal experiences as an INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) Special Agent.

While the news release focused on the one defendant in this case and made note of his “co-conspirators” the news release did not delve into the many other criminals in this case- the men who paid for the “services” of the prostitutes, especially those who were underage minors.

The administration’s policies of non-enforcement of the immigration laws from within the interior of the United States coupled with the current program of providing hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of illegal aliens with employment authorization under the aegis of the failed DREAM Act has served to encourage ever so many more illegal aliens from around the world to head for the United States.

Continued promises of enacting “immigration reform” which would amount to the most massive and sweeping amnesty program in the history of the United States shows the utter and complete disdain that those politicians, starting with the President of the United States and including all too many members of both the House of Representatives and the United States Senate, have for America’s immigration laws- laws that were enacted to protect lives and the jobs of American and lawful immigrant workers across America.

These actions and statements have served to act as the firing of a starter’s pistol and the finish line for these aspiring illegal aliens from across the planet is the border of the United States of America.

The race is on and for all too many, it is a race to the bottom where wages plummet and more people than ever stand to suffer the violence and degradation of crimes committed by those criminal aliens and gang members, whose violations of America’s borders and immigration laws are just the beginning of the laws they will eventually ignore and trample.  They have come to expect that there is little or no likelihood of getting caught or punished for their crimes.

Incredibly, their encouragement to violate the borders and immigration laws of the United States comes from the very leaders of the United States of America!