Mike Sigman’s letter to the editor (Herald, July 14), in defense of Donald Trump’s comments regarding the criminal activity of illegal aliens, took gross liberties with the 2014 dataset on sentencing in federal courts. He stated 42 percent of all federally sentenced crimes were committed by illegal aliens. He failed to point out that the primary crime for which an illegal immigrant is sentenced (66.2 percent) is – guess what? – an immigration offense such as illegal entry to or remaining in the U.S.
The second- and third-largest crime categories performed by illegal aliens are drug-related: drug trafficking (17.4 percent) and simple possession or sale of a small amount of marijuana (5.8 percent). Fraud ranked as the fourth-largest crime category (4.4 percent). A firearm offense, such as unlawful possession, transportation or use to commit a crime, ranked fifth (1.7 percent). The remaining crime categories for which an illegal alien was sentenced in federal court all fell below 1 percent.
Sigman was extremely misleading by stating that “the real problem is that U.S. citizens are being murdered, raped, and robbed ... by undocumented immigrants.” In the same data set, robbery accounted for less than three-quarters of 1 percent, murder accounted about one-third of 1 percent, and rape is not even cited. The real problem is that people often abuse data to disguise the truth and promote their political ideologies, a problem that only gets worse as major elections approach.
Jama Crawford
Durango
