Zack Taylor of the National Association for Former Border Patrol Officers has been a leading voice against immigration reform, charging that “America’s immigration laws are not broken” and estimating that there are around 20 million undocumented immigrants in the US. In an interview with the American Family Association’s Sandy Rios today, Taylor claimed that of the 20 million (a grossly inflated number), “potentially thirty percent” have criminal records – and that immigration enforcement officials must “cull the herd” of immigrants.
Actually, immigrants – both documented and undocumented — are far less likely to be incarcerated than native-born Americans, and many of those who are in prison are there as a result of immigration violations rather than violent crimes.
Taylor then went on to falsely suggest that the Obama administration is ignoring laws and not targeting immigrants with criminal records. But as Beth Caldwell notes, two million undocumented immigrants have been deported in the last five years and the Senate reform bill “categorically excludes most people with criminal convictions from relief.”
“It’s just like having a garden; you have to weed the garden. If you’re raising animals; you have to cull the herd. That’s what needs to happen,” Taylor said.
This whole business about legalizing an unknown—when I talk about unknown, we’re talking about potentially 30% of the people that are here have criminal records. Why don’t we just go ahead and enforce the current immigration laws? It’s just like having a garden; you have to weed the garden. If you’re raising animals; you have to cull the herd. That’s what needs to happen. We need to turn our law enforcement people into a screw to where the people that are taken full custody arrest of are processed for immigration backgrounds and those that have criminal records removed. That’s not so hard to understand because these people are being picked up committing other crimes.
