Crimmigration
Here is the reality. Every big city in America has a crapload of a-holes who threaten our safety… who commit crime… more than 500,000 people charged with crimes just in Harris County, Texas over the last five years. There is also a real COST OF CRIMMIGRATION too… crime committed by folks who are not Americans… who came here illegally… rapists and murders. While Chicago and Los Angeles are ground zero for the immigration battle, it’s time Harris County gets serious about protecting us from people who should not be here in the first place.
Crimmigration
Her name was Jocelyn Nungaray
We sadly all know her story.
Kidnapped. Raped. Murdered last June.
A young girl who became a symbol of the dangers of unchecked immigration.
Two illegals from Venezuela now stand charged with her capital murder.
“We get it. A lot of illegal immigrants come to America for a better quality of life. And we’re told that we are being unnecessarily scared—that illegal immigrants actually commit fewer crimes than Americans do. If that even matters. But then we see all this stuff on the local news,” Wayne Dolcefino told the camera.
Video of an aggravated kidnapping as it happens. The media doesn’t usually tell us if the suspects arrested are illegally here, but we do know the suspect in this shocking video is Honduran.
“When you really start asking the questions like we have in recent months, you quickly find out that local law enforcement doesn’t have a clue how much of our crime is being committed by people who aren’t Americans,” Dolcefino told the camera.
It seems like some of our law enforcement leaders don’t seem to really care.
“We have policies in place and we just do not ask,” HPD Jodi Silvia said.
“It’s time for that to change,” Dolcefino told the camera.
Crimes committed by folks who aren’t supposed to be here.
In the past 5 years, Houston has the second highest number of illegal immigrant arrests out of all U.S. cities, second only to Dallas.
The Immigrant Legal Resource Center published a study four years ago,
claiming non-citizens make up 20 percent of the Harris County population in jail but account for only 10 percent of arrests.
That can’t be right.
“But our research using raw crime data from Harris County over the last five years of criminal justice records shows the percentage is actually a lot higher, and we are about to show you,” Dolcefino told the camera.
In that time, there have been 520 thousand people charged with crimes in Harris County.
80 percent were attributed to citizens.
And if you believe the records, only 4 percent were actually due to non-citizens.
But for 16 percent of the people charged in Harris County, local prosecutors list the immigration status as unknown, or in many cases the immigration status is simply left blank.
But we know that at least sometimes the folks listed as unknown are illegally here, like the guys charged with Jocelyn’s brutal murder.
Johan Jose Martinez-Rangel and Franklin Pena both have ICE holds on them now.
But Pena shows up in Harris County’s crime data system with his immigration status left blank.
Soledad Mendoza, charged in the murder of her own eight-year-old daughter along with her boyfriend, is also in the system as unknown, so is he, yet they both have immigration violation.
And even when the database shows someone is a citizen, we are learning they might not be.
Abner Ruiz, an El Salvadoran national charged with online solicitation of a minor, shows up in the Harris County records as being an American citizen.
But that can’t be right—ICE has a hold on him.
These inaccuracies are making it impossible to know the real cost of illegal immigrant crime.
The Harris County records we are talking about are commonly referred to as DIM, the “District Attorney Intake Management.”
But you can’t blame the DA’s office for all the bad data…
“I wouldn’t place that solely on the prosecutor. The law enforcement at the point of arrest has a responsibility for some information. The jail, when the individual is brought to the joint processing center, has some responsibility,” Ed Wells said.
“Over the last few months, we’ve been asking questions to agencies that are involved in the criminal justice system from beginning to end,” Dolcefino told the camera.
“We don’t go around asking people if they’re citizens. That’s not our concern. We’re concerned with helping people out and keeping people safe,” Captain Jon Laird said.
And the lack of accountability for crime committed by illegal immigrants starts at the street level.
Eight years ago, Texas made it legal for local law enforcement to ask about citizenship, but Harris County doesn’t require that of the deputies.
And the Houston Police tell us they flat out never ask.
“We do not ask at all. They are asked at the jail when they are booked into the jail by Harris County personnel,” Silva said.
“So it’s up to the suspect who fills out? Who checks that?” Dolcefino told the camera.
Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez wouldn’t give us an interview for this report.
His spokesman Jason Spencer put us in our place for even asking…
“We don’t sit for interviews with private investigators hired by political campaigns, plaintiffs’ lawyers, etc. for the explicit purpose of creating hit pieces disguised as journalism.”
And guess what—you pay Spencer for those pearls of wisdom.
He pushes the responsibility for protecting us from illegal immigrant crime solely to ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
ICE, we’re told, has access to the Harris County Jail, even though the jailers aren’t required to help them.
“All of this is happening very quickly. Keep in mind, someone is arrested and appears before a magistrate generally within 24 hours,” Wells said.
Magistrates set bail amounts, terms for a suspect’s release, even if immigration status is still unknown.
“They have to inquire, and if that information is available, they have to consider it. That’s one of the requirements of the law. But if it’s not available, they still are required to set bail,” Wells said.
If ICE has reviewed the suspect, they can put a hold on that person that overrides any potential bail amount.
But clearly, with 16 percent of arrestees showing unknown citizenship, ICE isn’t likely able to review every case.
And this is how dangerous illegal immigrants can slip out of jail and back onto the street.
Local law enforcement claim no responsibility whatsoever.
“We have policies in place and we just do not ask. It is not something that is concerned or has any bearing on an investigation,” Silva said.
“If you put somebody in your jail and that name happens to be somebody that ICE has been looking for, is there any way that they’re going to find out?” Andrea Palacio said.
“Well, how do we know they’ve been looking for them?” Laird said.
“Well, that’s what I mean. Is there any kind of communication between you?” Palacio said.
“Oh, no, we don’t have a direct ICE line, no,” Laird said.
“The biggest problem is ICE has to have the support of local jails,” Luisa Deason said.
Luisa Deason is a former spokesperson for the Houston ICE office.
“There are certain pockets, I’m sure, in Houston that are considered sanctuary sections where you’re not going to get an officer to cooperate at all. Period. End of statement,” Deason said.
The State of Texas has put pressure on that to change.
A new Texas law effective January 1st of next year requires any law enforcement operating a jail to have a cooperative agreement with ICE through the 287(g) program.
This deputizes local law enforcement to assist with immigration enforcement.
“287(g) isn’t asking you to do the job of the ICE agent. It’s asking you to comply through a Memorandum of Agreement to be trained to know what to ask,” Deason said.
As of right now, our sheriff isn’t doing that…
“There’s got to be accountability. You cannot conduct positive and effective law enforcement if you don’t have different entities and different law enforcement agencies and levels of different police forces at local, state, and federal cooperating with one another,” Deason said.
The Trump administration has dramatically stepped up immigration enforcement.
Arrests and deportations are targeting what Homeland Security calls the “worst of the worst.”
But lax law enforcement and prosecution in past years here has left permanent scars.
Four years ago, Inzy Cruz Florez was supposedly beaten to death by Jose Corona, a Mexican national.
A year earlier, Harris County prosecutors had dismissed a drug charge against Corona and allowed him deferred adjudication instead of deportation.
Corona is now one of Harris County’s most wanted, still on the run.
Rafael Antonio Hernandez makes the FBI’s Most Wanted list in Houston for a double murder in 2023.
He’s an El Salvadoran national who had been charged in Harris County with assault of a family member two years earlier.
That charge was dismissed because he took a battering prevention class.
Investigators say Hernandez murdered two people in a jealous rage, including his own daughter.
“If there had been a facility at a local or state jail that would have honored an ICE detainer and agreed to the partnership with 287(g), those individuals that are victims who are no longer here would still be alive. These are preventable deaths,” Deason said.
There wasn’t a 287(g) partnership because when Sheriff Ed Gonzalez took office in 2017, he said proudly that he was getting rid of it.
The ACLU praised Gonzalez for fulfilling the campaign promise.
The sheriff’s spokesman admitted they have to join the program, but he said there is no reason to hurry.
“Any illegal alien in this country has broken a law. It is a crime to enter this country illegally,” Deason said.
There are current cases of violent crime committed by non-citizens who are out on bond instead of being deported.
Jessy Saba, from the Russian Federation, arrested in May for the murder of Merlie Alberto, got out of Harris County Jail on bond.
Jaggard Bouldin, citizenship unknown, was arrested in June for the murder of Eric West and got out of Harris County Jail on a $75,000 bond.
“No. If there’s not an ICE person at that jail, at the intake process, there will never be a number that they can release that will give you any kind of determination in the statistics of how many of those individuals are here legally and how many are not,” Deason said.
“All right, so if it’s Class C or less, you wouldn’t ever ask the guy his citizenship,” Palacio said.
“No, not for a Class C,” Laird said.
“The law has changed so that, effective September 1st, if the magistrate is aware that there is an ICE hold, that would be something that the magistrate or the criminal law hearing officer could not release them because of,” Cory Stott.
“Nothing has changed as far as the statutes. The statutes have been on the books for 40 years. The problem is that the previous administration didn’t follow any of them. This administration is following them to the letter of the law,” Deason said.
We think taxpayers—citizens—have a fundamental right to know just how much of our crime is being caused by people who have no right to be here.
The DA’s office has charged more than 5,000 people with crimes in this county between January 1 of 2020 and June of this year.
53,000 people either admitted they weren’t citizens or their citizenship is listed as unknown.
The citizenship of 48,729 people is simply left blank.
The official database of the Harris County District Clerk’s office captures citizenship data too, but since January 2023, more than 29,000 suspects charged with crimes are listed as nationality unknown.
The bottom line: it makes tracking the true cost of illegal immigrant crime in the Houston area impossible, no matter what anyone says.
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