A wave of burglaries is spreading across the Washington area, and police say illegal immigrants, hit by police crackdowns and the drop in new construction, are likely playing a key role.
“The immigrant community is at a tipping point,” said Montgomery County police community liaison Officer Luis Hurtado. “The poor economy is pushing more immigrants to turn to crime.”
In the first five months of this year, burglaries climbed 10 to 20 percent in many jurisdictions.
The District of Columbia had the greatest increase, jumping 20 percent from 1,370 in the first five months of 2007 to 1,638 for the same period this year.
Montgomery County police said they’ve averaged 288 burglaries a month for the first five months of this year, up 23 per month, or nearly 10 percent, from last year.
Alexandria stood out as the only jurisdiction showing a significant decline — 33 percent — but police couldn’t explain the drop.
And many more burglaries in which illegal immigrants themselves are the victims have likely gone unreported; illegals often shy away from police, whom they fear may arrest them for violating immigration laws, community activists said.
Last week, about 100 residents from the massive Latino community in Takoma/Langley Park, which straddles the Prince George’s-Montgomery County line, met with police officials from both counties. They demanded action for what they described as a neighborhood under siege.
In recent weeks, a shopkeeper was shot to death and a police officer killed a man all within a one-block radius at the center of the community. But it’s the unreported crimes that have residents most concerned, and improved relations with police are needed to fight back, said Mario Quiroz, spokesman for immigrant advocacy group CASA de Maryland.
Meanwhile, four illegal immigrants from Virginia and Maryland who work in construction told The Examiner there are fewer jobs available now that housing starts have fallen. Expanded efforts by area officials to check immigration status and punish employers who fail to verify employee status have ended much of
the migratory cycle that carried illegals from job to job around the region.
Crime experts have mixed opinions on the role illegal immigrants play when it comes to breaking the law. Criminologists either believe illegals are more prone to criminal behavior because they’ve already broken one law upon entering the country, or they will more likely keep their hands clean, fearing deportation.
Eric Rasmusen, an economist at Indiana University, studied a 2005 report to Congress on foreigners held in federal and state prisons to find that illegal immigrants commit 21 percent of crimes in the United States, costing the U.S. more than $84 billion.
But William Chambliss, a criminologist at American University, disagrees: “It’s always easy and nice to say there’s a connection between illegal immigrants and crime … but there’s little to no empirical evidence to show that.”
Chambliss said there is a connection, however, between the failing economy and the rise in burglaries “that’s not true of other, more violent crimes.”
Making matters worse is that there are now many more items in people’s homes — iPods and laptops, for example — that are easier to steal than there were a decade ago.
At the end of the day, though, a life of crime comes with little profit. At best, Chambliss said, a burglar can get 10 percent of the value on a stolen item.
