“Nobody saw this coming […] They just go right back to the United States. It’s a vicious cycle.”
That was Tijuana Mayor Kurt Honald, quoted by The Register as they continue their series on crime and immigration. Mayor Honald has protested the increasingly common practice of US officials deporting immigrant criminals to Tijuana, and he claims that “deportees” have triggered a 300% rise in petty crime during the last year, as criminals raise money to return to the US. So wait…Hold on a moment. What’s happening as these immigrants are being left in Tijuana?
What are the results of this “criminal dumping”? Let’s see, The Register found that deporting criminals to Tijuana encourages their speedy return because they are dropped off near the border, in a strange city that is closer to their adopted home than their birthplace. Also, there’s virtually no communication between U.S. officials deporting criminals and local law enforcement in Tijuana, who receive them. Mexican police say they seldom know whether the deportees were arrested for driving while intoxicated or served a prison term for rape or murder.
So what ends up happening? The Register found that dumping criminals back into cities unable to absorb all these homeless, unemployed new residents fuels more crime on both sides of the border. Some deportees with no history of violent crime desperately resort to that.
So what do you think about this? Are US authorities doing the right thing here? Or are we unfairly dumping part of our “crime problem” on Tijuana? I want to hear what you have to say about all this immigrant criminal dumping.
Go ahead and have your say.
I think it would be more humane for both the deported people and the border cities if the deportees were flown deep into the heart of Mexico. It’s not fair to cities like TJ to have a flood of criminals just dumped off at their doorstep. The entire immigration policy is whacked.
SAC-
I’m quoting The Register because it’s a newspaper that reports the news. It’s not all that hard to figure out. 😉
Allan-
Well, I’ll agree with you that immigration policy is whacked. I guess I’ll just have to admit that this specific issue is a toughie. I can see good reasons to deport undocumented immigrants who’ve committed violent felonies (like rape, murder, armed robbery, etc.), and turn them into Mexican law enforcement to deal with. But is it fair to just dump a lot of folks who may have done nothing more than ride the bike on the wrong side of the road in Tijuana? And is it fair that Tijuana have to deal with this large homless, jobless population that we’ve dumped on them?
The Mayor of Tijuana is named Kurt Honland?
SAC-
You’re looking awfully ridiculous now. While I usually don’t agree with The Register’s editorialists, I have seen no reason to distrust the news division.
Anon 3:06-
Beats me. Ya know, Mexico isn’t exactly a homogenous society. There are still indigenous tribes in Mexico, and there are also families that trace their lineage back to some remote Medieval village in Southern Spain. Oh yes, and wasn’t Vicente Fox’s grandmother Irish?