With few details, Trump touts office for victims of crime by undocumented immigrants
WASHINGTON -- One moment deep into President Trump's speech Tuesday night elicited a visceral groan from his Democratic critics.
It came as the president announced the name of his program that will highlight crimes committed by undocumented immigrants and aid their victims. He called it "VOICE: Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement." Inside the chamber, Democrats made their disgust audible.
"This is an attempt by the Trump administration to continue to paint a pejorative view of immigrants in this country when overwhelmingly they are contributors to our society," Sen. Bob Menendez (D., N.J.), the Senate's senior Latino member, said Wednesday.
Exactly what will this new office do? The details aren't clear, more than a month after Trump set its creation in motion.
"I have ordered the Department of Homeland Security to create an office to serve American victims," he said in his speech. "We are providing a voice to those who have been ignored by our media and silenced by special interests."
His Jan. 25 executive order creating the office called for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to "provide proactive, timely, adequate, and professional services" to victims and family members of crimes committed by anyone eligible for deportation. It also ordered quarterly reports "studying the effects of the victimization by criminal aliens present in the United States."
Questions about the specifics — how much money would be devoted to the new program, what information would be published —went unanswered Wednesday. The White House referred questions to ICE. An ICE spokeswoman emailed a statement largely reiterating what Trump said the previous night.
"The men and women comprising the VOICE office will be guided by a singular, straightforward mission – to support victims of crime committed by immigration violators through access to information and other resources, as needed," the spokeswoman, Jennifer Elzea, wrote in an email.
During his campaign and again Tuesday night, Trump highlighted heart-wrenching anecdotes of people killed by undocumented immigrants.
On Tuesday, first lady Melania Trump sat with family members of three such victims. Two of those slain were Northern California sheriff's deputies. The third was Californian Jamiel Shaw Jr., who was 17 when he was killed by a gang member in the country illegally.
Shaw "was an incredible young man, with unlimited potential, who was getting ready to go to college, where he would have excelled as a great college quarterback. But he never got the chance," Trump said in his speech.
Democrats accused Trump of trying to poison public opinion on all immigrants.
"Last night, if you listened to the characterization of immigrants, it was negative, virtually from start to finish," said Sen. Dick Durbin (D., Ill.).
Statistics, while limited and rough, suggest that immigrants are no more prone to commit crimes than native-born Americans.
At the end of 2014, they accounted for 7 percent of the total U.S. population, but only 4.6 percent of the population in state and federal prisons, according to a January report from the Congressional Research Service, Congress' nonpartisan research arm. (Those numbers include noncitizens both legally and illegally in the country.)
Nearly 90 percent of noncitizens in federal prison were there for drug offenses or immigration-related crimes in fiscal year 2013, the report said. Only 1.2 percent were imprisoned for violent crimes, compared with 7.3 percent of federal prisoners who were U.S. citizens.
The report, however, urged caution because of variations in reporting and definitions at the federal, state, and county levels. The count is also likely low because California does not report the number of noncitizens in jail, though the report noted that based on previous data from the state, the national percentage of noncitizens in prison would likely still fall below the percentage in the overall population.
Trump's supporters argue that it's fair to single out crimes committed by undocumented immigrants.
"Every crime that is committed by someone who is here illegally is a crime that would not occur if they weren't in the country," Hans von Spakovsky, a legal expert at the conservative Heritage Foundation, told CNN.
Menendez, the son of Cuban immigrants, noted that the Department of Justice has an office that aids crime victims. He questioned why the president didn't create special offices for, say, victims of crimes committed with illegally obtained guns, or by white supremacists.
Mexico's consul general in Philadelphia said Wednesday that it was "sad" to connect immigration and criminality.