Untold Story

Donald Trump was roundly criticized for claiming during the election campaign that many illegal immigrants from Mexico and Central America are felons, specifically rapists. This claim drew the ire of not only Hispanics but a lot of non-Hispanic Americans, too, so why did Trump make it? Is there any reason to think that it's true?

Columnist Ann Coulter thinks so. In an essay at the Daily Caller she asserts that the media are downplaying the facts about what amounts to an epidemic of rape in North Carolina, an epidemic that involves a disproportionate number of Hispanic immigrants. The statistics she cites are alarming:

According to North Carolinians for Immigration Reform and Enforcement, immigrants commit hundreds of sex crimes against children in North Carolina every month — 350 in the month of April 2014, 299 in May, and more than 400 in August and September. More than 90 percent of the perpetrators are Hispanic.

If this is true, it's literally shocking. Coulter goes on to identify many of the perpetrators of these horrible crimes and notes the failure of the government and the media to inform the public of what's really happening. She adds that,

There have been more stories in the American media about a rape by white lacrosse players that didn’t happen than about thousands of child rapes in North Carolina that did.

Coulter's column addresses one kind of crime, sexual assault, in one state. But if a piece by Adam Bandler at The Wire titled 9 Things You Need to Know about Illegal Immigration is accurate the statistics for other crimes like homicide, drug trafficking, DUI, and so on are equally appalling.

For example, Bandler quotes a FOX News study that,

...sorted through myriad "local, state and federal statistics" and found that "illegal immigrants are three times as likely to be convicted of murder as members of the general population and account for far more crimes than their 3.5-percent share of the U.S. population would suggest."

The percentage of illegals committing the number of crimes are as follows, according to Fox News:

• 13.6 percent of those sentenced for all committed crimes in the country
• 12 percent of murder sentences
• 16 percent of trafficking sentences

This is not an argument for preventing Hispanics from seeking a better life in this country - many of them make wonderful contributions to our nation - but it is an argument, a powerful one, for making sure that we control who, exactly, is coming in and that we know what their backgrounds are.

One reason Trump beat Clinton last November is that Trump promised to gain control of our borders while Hillary seemed more inclined to follow President Obama in throwing our borders wide open. Those who support open borders, however, are probably not among the parents of those thousands of girls raped every year in North Carolina and presumably elsewhere.