The criminal alien problem is growing.

Criminal aliens—non-citizens who commit crimes—are a growing threat to public safety and national security, as well as a drain on our scarce criminal justice resources. In 1980, our federal and state prisons housed fewer than 9,000 criminal aliens. By the end of 1999, these same prisons housed over 68,000 criminal aliens.¹ Today, criminal aliens account for over 29 percent of prisoners in Federal Bureau of Prisons facilities and a higher share of all federal prison inmates.² These prisoners represent the fastest growing segment of the federal prison population. Over the past five years, an average of more than 72,000 aliens have been arrested annually on drug charges alone. New issue paper.

Continued illegal immigration aggravates the problem.

Despite the Border Patrol making over one million apprehensions last year, they estimate they miss two or more illegal bordercrossers for every apprehension. Most enter for short periods, but there is an estimated net increase of about 300,000 a year from illegal bordercrossers who stay. An additional net increase of 200,000 comes from people who enter legally as nonimmigrants and then violate their status. Among the alien federal prisoners, over half (55 percent) were illegally in the United States at the time of their conviction.

Administering justice to criminal aliens costs the taxpayer dearly.

Incarceration of criminal aliens cost an estimated $624 million to state prisons (1999) and $891 million to federal prisons (2002), according to the most recent available figure from the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

The New York State Senate Committee on Cities estimates that the annual criminal justice costs for criminal aliens in New York is $270 million. The Committee has called for a national moratorium on immigration to help alleviate this problem.³ According to the Illinois Governor’s Office, Illinois spends over $40 million just on the incarceration of criminal aliens. The cost to Florida’s judicial and correction system for criminal aliens was $73 million in 1993. ⁴ In 1988, there were 5,500 illegal immigrants in California’s prisons. By fiscal year 1994- 1995, that is estimated to have increased to more than 18,000 illegal immigrants in state prisons—a three-fold increase. California taxpayers have spent over a billion dollars in the last five years to keep these convicted felons in prison, and the FY 9495 cost of incarcerating these offenders exceeded $375 million.⁵ The federal government has begun to reimburse heavily alien-impacted states for some of the costs of illegal alien prisoners in their state prisons. For 1996, Congress appropriated $300 million for this program.

Many criminal aliens are released into our society to commit crimes again.

Too often, criminal aliens are not identified in local and state jails, the INS is not informed of their presence, detention facilities are not available when they are released, they fail to report for deportation, or they return to the United States after deportation. In March 2000, Congress made public Department of Justice statistics showing that, over the previous five years, the INS had released over 35,000 criminal aliens instead of deporting them. Over 11,000 of those released went on to commit serious crimes, over 1,800 of which were violent ones (including 98 homicides, 142 sexual assaults, and 44 kidnappings). In 2001, thanks to a decision by the Supreme Court, the INS was forced to release into our society over 3,000 criminal aliens (who collectively had been convicted of 125 homicides, 387 sex offenses, and 772 assault charges).⁶

What can be done?

1. We must secure our borders. Denying jobs to illegal aliens through a centralized secure identity verification system is important to that effort.
2. We must assure that the criminal conviction of an alien leads to deportation and permanent exclusion from the United States.
3. Asylum applicants should be screened expeditiously and excluded if their claims are not credible. Even if they appear to have credible claims, they should be detained until background checks are done.
4. Other corrective measures include greater INS and local government cooperation to identify criminal aliens, additional detention facilities for those in deportation proceedings, and improved databases and screening procedures to identify deported aliens if they try to return here either overtly or surreptitiously.

1. Other aliens not included in this total include immigrants who have become U.S. citizens (not included in the federal prison data), aliens being held for trial and some awaiting deportation but not convicted in the United States, e.g., the Cuban Marielitos.
2. National Institute of Corrections, Federal Bureau of Prisons, June 2003.
3. “Our Teeming Shore,” New York State Senate Committee on Cities, Sen. Frank Padavan, Chr.; Jan. 1994.
4. “The Unfair Burden: Immigration’s Impact on Florida,” Executive Office of the Governor; March 1994.
5. “California’s Illegal Immigration Costs: A Call for Federal Leadership,” Office of the Governor; 1994.
6. Zadvydas v. Davis (U.S. 2001).

Updated 10/02