The Department of Homeland Security has opened the Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement (VOICE) Office to give victims of crime by illegal aliens more information on the cases and on the perpetrators’ deportation proceedings.
“There is nothing but goodness in what we’re doing today,” said John Kelly, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. “My heart goes out to you. I do understand what you’ve been through,” he told family members of murder victims on Wednesday.
Kelly, who lost his son when he was killed while serving in Afghanistan, continued:
These crimes, in many ways, were preventable. But because of years and years of policies complicating immigration and enforcement efforts, and a politically-correct approach to public safety, there are mothers who will never again receive a Mother’s Day card from a son. There are husbands who will never again kiss their wives. There are children who will never get to graduate from high school. These victims of illegal aliens aren’t data points. They’re people. And they and their families deserve to be treated fairly … While we can never fully heal them, we can give them a voice.”
Kelly took no questions after the briefing and shook hands with the families.
The department has also launched a the DHS-Victim Information and Notification Exchange (DHS-VINE), an automated, national system to send automatic updates to changes in custody information regarding specific illegal aliens charged with or convicted of a crime. It will help victims, families, attorneys, victims’ advocates, and more navigate the federal immigration system. State-run VINEs will also automatically send victims and families automatic updates on releasable criminal case information and other custody status updates. Plus, victims and families will be able to see where an illegal alien is being detained.
Kelly’s announcement is the latest step the Trump administration has taken in its first 100 days to side with Americans over big business and the Democratic party seeking consumers and voters.
Illegal aliens commit an extraordinary amount of almost entirely preventable crimes. In a 2011 report, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) estimated that illegal aliens comprised a stunning 27 percent of the federal inmate prison population. (Republicans joining Democrats in opposing mythological “mass incarceration” might want to support immigration law to keep prison populations low.) When analyzing a large, random sample of illegal aliens incarcerated in 2009 and 2010, GAO found each criminal alien averaged seven arrests, with 50 percent being arrested for at least one drug offense. That’s significant, because heroin trafficking is a major consequence of allowing illegal immigration to go uncontrolled, and in 2010, heroin overdose deaths began to rise until they had tripled in only five years.
According to a recent op-ed in TheHill by a retired California detective:
Most states and our federal government have kept information and statistics about illegal immigration, crimes committed by illegals and the costs borne by you the U.S. payer out of public view. It is in fact difficult, but not impossible to locate accurate crime statistics involving illegal immigrants. The statistics are buried both to suit a political agenda and to avoid public outcry. Once you read this article, you will quickly understand why…
The U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Sentencing Commission reported that as of 2014, illegal immigrants were convicted and sentenced for over 13 percent of all crimes committed in the U.S.
According to the FBI, 67,642 murders were committed in the U.S. from 2005 through 2008, and 115,717 from 2003 through 2009. The General Accounting Office documents that criminal immigrants committed 25,064 of these murders.
To extrapolate out these statistics, this means that a population of just over 3.5 percent residing in the U.S. unlawfully committed 22 percent to 37 percent of all murders in the nation. This is astounding.
Those who have lost loved ones at the hands of illegal aliens have previously told Breitbart News how difficult it was to secure legal assistance.
Legal immigrant Agnes Gibboney, whose son Ronald da Silva was murdered in 2002 by an illegal, told SiriusXM host Matthew Boyle she had only a prosecutor to look out for her interests in court—and it did not work out well for her. “Everything went wrong. I was not allowed to say my impact statement. I was not allowed to address the court. I was not allowed to get the probation hearing report. And when I called them to ask how come I didn’t get it, they said, ‘My boss told me not to talk to you,’ and hung up,” she said.
Laura Wilkerson—who, as Breitbart News has reported, summoned the strength to publicly tell the story of her son Joshua’s violent, torturous death at the hands of an illegal alien classmate over and over again—said she had to pay for an attorney out of her own pocket. “They didn’t want me to sit in the trial, and I had to hire an attorney just to make that happen,” she said. It would have been unimaginable for her not to be present in the courtroom that day.
Families are often “re-victimized” by the court system and need help with funeral and counseling, said Maria Espinoza, head of the Remembrance Project.
“[W]hat’s very important that people don’t understand that in so many cases, our families are being re-victimized, because they’re being misguided in the court system,” she said. “Either activist judges, or activist prosecutors—so we really need someone to help and guide our families. Who can afford an attorney for themselves? And here illegal aliens get one. If they murder an American, they are given two attorneys to protect them, to defend them.”
Listen to the Angel Moms’ stories of how difficult it was to secure adequate legal representation here.
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