USA TODAY International Edition
New immigrant crime office gives VOICE to prejudice
Crime victims and their loved ones are often forgotten in the confusing criminal justice system. After the trauma of a crime, people struggle to find out what happened to the suspect who robbed them or killed someone they love. But over the past three decades, many programs have been created to assist them.
Today, the Trump administration is set to roll out a new victims program — one President Trump called for in his speech to a joint session of Congress on Feb. 28, asserting, “We must support the victims of crime.”
No argument there. But this particular taxpayer- funded effort is highly selective, supporting victims only of particular crimes — those perpetrated by undocumented immigrants. Combined with Trump’s executive order calling on this new office to issue quarterly reports on “the effects of the victimization by criminal aliens present in the United States,” this smacks of a scheme to stir fear of immigrants.
“Criminal aliens routinely victimize Americans and other legal residents,” said a Feb. 20 memo by Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, outlining the new Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement ( VOICE) Office.
Never mind that immigrants on the whole — undocumented or in the U. S. legally — are less prone to crime than native Americans, according to studies by researchers over many years. One study using 2010 Census data found that incarceration rates among young, less- educated Mexican, Salvadoran and Guatemalan men, who make up a large part of the unauthorized population, are significantly lower than the incarceration rate among native- born young men without a high- school diploma.
Even if the facts showed otherwise, there are good reasons this country doesn’t create separate programs for victims of crimes by Jews or Catholics or African Americans or Asians or juveniles or short people. Categorizing criminals in this way is not going to provide any special comfort to victims. And, by underscoring and overpublicizing the acts of some members, such efforts are the first step toward assigning guilt to a group.
This runs contrary to the core American value that people deserve to be judged as individuals, based on their own behavior. To do otherwise is the very definition of prejudice. It’s why Trump’s call for the VOICE office was greeted with hisses from Democrats during his address to Congress.
The president asserted in that speech that victims of immigrant crime “have been ignored by our media and silenced by special interests.” That doesn’t jibe with the facts, either. The fatal shooting of San Francisco resident Kathryn Steinle in 2015, allegedly by an undocumented immigrant with a long criminal record, set off a national debate over sanctuary cities still raging today.
No city should provide sanctuary to undocumented immigrants accused of felonies. Crime victims and their relatives deserve help and information. But such assistance need not be wrapped in a package that exaggerates immigrant crimes, fosters a notion of group guilt, and stirs up bigotry. Blaming an already unpopular minority group for the actions of a few has no place in America.