Illegal Aliens Turn Up in U.S. Firearms Database of 13.9 Million ‘Prohibiting Events’
The FBI has nearly 14 million records of illegal aliens in a database used to run background checks on individuals seeking to purchase firearms.
The index – tallying 13.9 million “unique prohibiting events” involving illegal aliens, including arrests, convictions and commitments to mental institutions – indicates that illegally present migrants may not be as law-abiding as some studies claim.
Between November 1998 and November 2023, there were 47,930 denials of firearm purchases to illegal/unlawful aliens involving the National Instant Criminal Background (NICS) system.
Whether those records and denials compiled over the period resulted in any apprehensions or removals is unknown.
In 2019, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that included an amendment requiring gun sellers to notify Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) when an illegal immigrant tries to buy a gun. But that provision did not clear the Senate and never became law.
So, even though illegal aliens are prohibited from possessing firearms under 18 USC 922(g) and sales of firearms to illegal aliens are also against the law, immigration enforcement officers are hampered from doing their job.
While the 13.9 million “unique prohibiting events” catalogued in the FBI database represent events — not individual illegal aliens — the data point to large numbers of migrants in the market for firearms. Whatever the total may be, one is one too many.
In Texas, illegal aliens have been charged with 6,112 weapons offenses since 2011. (The state report did not specify the types of weapons.) One of the more heinous offenses of late involved an illegal alien who gunned down five people, including a 9-year-old boy, in Cleveland, Texas, last April. That illegal alien, Francisco Oropesa Perez-Torres, had previously been deported four times.
The dangers posed by largely unvetted illegal aliens possessing firearms has been vastly exacerbated over the past three years, as the Biden administration has presided over record numbers of new illegal aliens entering our country. At the same time, federal policies and the proliferation of sanctuary jurisdictions that prohibit the sharing of critical law enforcement information will inevitably result in more Americans falling prey to criminal aliens.