“There is a “small number of non-detained migrants” who have been convicted of homicide but can’t be sent back to their home countries after serving their time, mostly because the U.S. doesn’t have repatriation agreements with those countries, Nowrasteh says. A 2001 Supreme Court decision bars ICE from indefinitely keeping someone in immigration detention, but “non-detained” people are often still subject to ICE check-ins or electronic monitoring.
Trump is also wrong to claim that these individuals all came to the U.S. under the Biden administration. The list “includes individuals who entered the country over the past 40 years or more,” explained the Department of Homeland Security in a Saturday statement, “the vast majority of whose custody determination was made long before this Administration.””
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“The number of convicted criminals on ICE’s nondetained docket hasn’t grown significantly under President Joe Biden, reported The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler. In August 2016, five months before Trump took office, there were 368,574 on the docket; in June 2021, five months into Biden’s presidency, there were 405,786; and in December 2022, nearly two years into Biden’s presidency, there were 407,983.
As he campaigns ahead of the presidential election next month, Trump has routinely said outrageous, misleading, and false things about immigrants and crime. He often talks about a “migrant crime” wave and claims that it “is taking over America.” Much like his migrant murderers claim, the true picture looks very different. Crime decreased in the cities that received the most migrants through Texas’ Operation Lone Star busing activities, per NBC News. “The most recent significant crime spike in recent years occurred in 2020,” Cato Institute Associate Director of Immigration Studies David J. Bier told Reason in March, “when illegal immigration was historically low until the end of the year.”
Trump paints a terrifying picture of migrants and migration, but the reality is far more nuanced and far less dangerous than he would suggest.”
“The New York Police Department (NYPD) has a history of protecting bystanders by shooting them. This March, when Brooklyn man Nathan Scott tried to shoot a mugger who had his wallet, the NYPD killed Scott and wounded an auto mechanic across the street. In 2013, after a man in a road rage incident made finger guns and reached for his pocket, the NYPD tased the man and shot two women nearby. In 2012, after a disgruntled ex-employee murdered his coworker outside the Empire State Building, the NYPD shot the murderer along with nine bystanders.”
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“After chef Derrell Mickles allegedly snuck into a subway station without paying his fare on Sunday, the NYPD tried to arrest him. They claim that Mickles muttered “I’m going to kill you if you don’t stop following me” and drew a knife. (Mickles’ mother says the knife was from his job.)
After failing to subdue Mickles with a taser, the officers shot him, two bystanders, and one of their own in the crowded station.”
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“Mickles was within seven feet of the officers when they shot him, the NYPD says. Police are traditionally taught the “21-foot rule,” which says that a suspect holding a knife within 21 feet is close enough to pose an immediate threat. But the 21-foot rule is not a license to start shooting anyone within that distance”
“I can’t speak to whether the allegations against Combs are true. But reading the indictment, a few things jump out that I can comment on. The first is how—once again—the Mann Act rears its ugly head, making criminal what really should not be a crime. The second is how federal prosecutors are (once again) stretching the application of sex trafficking laws to conduct that goes beyond the sort of actions they were originally pushed to target. And the third is how the racketeering conspiracy charge opens up the government to seizing way more assets than they would otherwise be allowed to seize.”
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“Merely transporting someone across state lines to engage in sexual activity should not be a crime. If there’s abduction or coercion involved, that is the criminal activity. We don’t also need a law criminalizing the mere transportation element. It’s like making opening the door to a bank during the commission of a bank robbery its own separate crime.
But the Mann Act lets federal prosecutors charge people whom they don’t otherwise have cause to arrest or, in situations like Combs’ case, to ratchet up the charges, perhaps in service of producing a plea deal.
Combs is charged with violating the Mann Act for allegedly making “arrangements for women and commercial sex workers to fly to [his] location.” The alleged sex workers involved were all men.
The indictment contains no allegation that he forced or coerced these sex workers into anything. But if he arranged for their travel, across state lines and internationally, the feds have him on a Mann Act violation.”
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“So what about the other charges? Combs allegedly induced women to participate in sex parties he called “Freak Offs,” which the indictment describes as “elaborate and produced sex performances that COMBS arranged, directed, masturbated during, and often electronically recorded.” For these parties, Combs would allegedly hire male sex workers for women to hook up with.
So far, so what? The only potential crime in all that is hiring the male sex workers. But soliciting prostitution is not a federal crime (though it is a state or local crime almost everywhere in the country). And it’s possible no one involved thought of this as prostitution. According to the indictment, Combs would frequently film the sex acts at these “Freak Offs.” Making porn is not illegal if all parties are consenting.
The indictment goes into some detail about these alleged sex parties. But while it’s heavy on lurid description, its light on actual criminal acts.”
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“it doesn’t say that he forced anyone to do drugs or gave anyone drugs surreptitiously.
Even many of Combs’ alleged means of coercing women to participate in these parties are likely legal. They include activities that might well be controlling in certain contexts but not necessarily criminal—things like making “promises of career opportunities,” giving them financial support (or threatening to withhold it), “dictating [their] appearance,” and “monitoring their medical records.”
However, that’s not all that Combs is accused of doing. The indictment also says he used “the sensitive, embarrassing, and incriminating recordings that he made during Freak Offs as collateral to ensure the continued obedience and silence of the victims.”
And it accuses him of having assaulted some of the women, “striking, punching, dragging, throwing objects at, and kicking them.”
Several women have previously accused Combs of sexual assault. And at least one video was made public last fall of Combs punching and kicking Casandra Ventura, an R&B singer who goes by Cassie. (Ventura sued him in civil court, saying Combs had raped her, physically assaulted her, and forced her to have sex with other men while he filmed. The suit was settled a day after Ventura filed it.)”
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“We’ve got one charge for something that should not be a crime (transportation of willing adults). Even if Combs did this, it should not matter, morally or legally.
Then we’ve got allegations of the sort of violence and abuse that definitely should be illegal—albeit not the purview of the federal government. If Combs did these things, they are both morally abhorrent and should be prosecutable under state criminal laws.
Then we’ve got this third, murkier business—the sex parties—that it’s hard to know what to make of.
And this murky third element is the thing that the federal government really needs to justify this case. It’s the area where the indictment has devoted the most attention, and also where the lines between legal adult activity and criminal sex trafficking are blurry.”
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” According to the indictment, Combs used his “power and prestige,” along with “the pretense of a romantic relationship,” to “lure” women to him. So…he was a rich and famous dude who women were drawn to and he maybe used that to his sexual advantage? That may be cad-like behavior, but it is not (nor should it be) illegal.”
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“the alleged trafficker—Combs—is accused of paying money to consenting sex workers and using force or coercion to find sex partners for them. It’s not the sex workers who are allegedly being trafficked but the people whom the sex workers are paid to have sex with.”
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“Is that really sex trafficking? It seems like prosecutors are once again stretching the definition.
Sex trafficking statutes were enacted with a promise of stopping forced prostitution. But prosecutors and people bringing civil lawsuits have found all sorts of creative ways to use them, hurling sex trafficking allegations at social media websites, software companies, and sex workers themselves, as well as people engaged in a wide array of odd or bad behavior adjacent to sex”
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“Combs may well have engaged in some nasty, abusive, and criminal behavior. But things can be nasty, abusive, and even criminal without necessarily being sex trafficking.”
“Former President Donald Trump on Sunday called for “one real rough, nasty” and “violent day” of police retaliation in order to eradicate crime “immediately.”
The remarks — delivered by Trump at a rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, just 36 days before the election — did not amount to a new policy proposal, according to a Trump campaign official.”
“Only about 30 percent of Texas prisons are fully air-conditioned. While state law mandates that prison temperatures be kept between 65 degrees and 85 degrees, at dozens of state prisons, daily high temperatures topped that. At one prison, Garza West Unit, temperatures stayed above 100 degrees for 11 days straight in the summer of 2023.”
“Over the past five years, Chicago taxpayers have forked over nearly $400 million to resolve lawsuits stemming from officer misconduct, according to a new analysis of city data. While around 1,300 police officers were named in the lawsuits, just 200 were responsible for more than 40 percent of the total cost.”
“”Homicides Are Skyrocketing in American Cities Under Kamala Harris,” Donald Trump’s campaign avers in a statement issued on Monday. Like Trump’s assertion that “our crime rate is going up,” this claim is completely at odds with reality.
According to FBI data, the homicide rate jumped by more than 27 percent in 2020, when Trump was president; rose slightly in 2021, the first year of the Biden administration; and fell by 7 percent in 2022. Preliminary FBI numbers show bigger drops in 2023 (about 13 percent) and this year (26 percent for the first quarter). So far this year, according to data from 277 cities, homicides are down by about 17 percent.”