Melting those ICE-y myths

“And now, O Israel, what is it that the Lord your God demands of you, if not this…: To walk in all the ways of the Lord…, who shows no favor and takes no bribe, but upholds the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and befriends the stranger, providing food and clothing. You too must befriend the stranger….” (See Deuteronomy 10.)

Those words Moses spoke to Israel are recorded in last week’s Torah portion, Ekev. As I read them, I recalled a private conversation I had unavoidably overheard a couple of days earlier between two observant people who probably heard them being read last Shabbat in their shuls, just as I had.

Nevertheless, one of them clearly draws the line when it comes to “befriending” any stranger who dares to cross our southern border in search of a better life in what our immigrant ancestors — our parents and/or grandparents and other relatives — called “the Golden Land,” the “Goldeneh Medinah.”

Our ancestors were either fleeing the deadly pogroms in Russian and later Soviet territories, or they were fleeing Nazi Germany’s death machine. Those fleeing the Nazis tragically had to overcome the enormous effort the “land of the free” made to keep them within Adolf Hitler’s reach.

Get New Jersey Jewish News's Newsletter by email and never miss our top stories Free Sign Up

To understand how enormous that effort was, I suggest reading the late Arthur Morse’s deeply disturbing 1968 book, “While Six Million Died: A Chronicle of American Apathy.” In it, he details all that the U.S. government, and especially the State Department, did to build a bureaucratic “border wall” designed to keep out Jews fleeing the Shoah.

We Jews should know better than anyone else the heavy price to be paid by shutting the doors to people fleeing persecution in search of a better life. This, however, was not something either participant in that conversation raised.

Of the two participants, one was clearly opposed to the actions taken at the southern border and now throughout the U.S., as well, by the Trump administration and its U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement “storm troopers.” This opposition incensed the other participant, judging by that person’s strident voice and the body language I observed.

What troubled me the most, however, is how this person, an obviously caring and intelligent individual, had bought into the lies that Trump and his team tell to justify what some have called fascist-like tactics to root out asylum-seekers. And before anyone runs to the nearest computer keyboard, among those who use the word fascist are John Kelly, Trump’s own former White House chief of staff, and former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley.

Trump, of course, is the main source of those lies and mischaracterizations. The “animals,” as Trump calls them (and as Hitler and company called us) — “they’re not humans,” after all — are coming across the border in order to “rape, pillage, thieve, plunder and kill” us, he says. These “stone-cold killers” even intend to “grab young girls and slice them up right in front of their parents,” among other idiotic things that come out of his mouth.

The pro-Trump participant in the overheard conversation insisted that what the president says is all true and has been true for many years, especially during periods when a Democrat occupied the Oval Office.

It is all true, this person insisted with great passion. The evidence is there, and it is as plain as day.

What is as plain as day, however, is that it is all a pack of lies, and there is a mountain of evidence to prove it.

According to a Migration Policy Institute research paper released last October — a research paper heavily dependent on federal, state, and local crime statistics — “Immigrants in the United States commit crimes at lower rates than the U.S.-born population…. This reality of reduced criminality, which holds across immigrant groups including unauthorized immigrants, has been demonstrated through research as well as findings for the one state in the United States — Texas — that tracks criminal arrests and convictions by immigration status. [There is more on Texas’s findings below.]

“A growing volume of research demonstrates that not only do immigrants commit fewer crimes, but they also do not raise crime rates in the U.S. communities where they settle. In fact, some studies indicate that immigration can lower criminal activity, especially violent crime, in places with inclusive policies and social environments where immigrant populations are well established.”

The bottom line is this: The available, accessible, and observable evidence does not in any way support the persistent claim that criminals — and even worse, terrorists — are flooding into this country and wreaking deadly havoc on our streets and in our homes, all of which supposedly constitutes a grave national security risk.

That there is a crisis at our southern border is beyond dispute. That the overwhelming majority of undocumented immigrants streaming in are “stone cold killers,” as Trump describes them, however, is observably false just based on ICE’s own website dashboards. In June, there were 56,397 undocumented immigrants being held in ICE detention centers. Of these detainees, 40,461 — 71.7 percent — had no criminal record.

This is also true: Over the last four years, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials have “encountered” more than 10 million illegal aliens at the southern border. While it is true that some serious crimes have been committed by illegals, the number of such crimes is statistically insignificant. Here are some facts to consider:

• The Texas Department of Public Safety tracks the immigration status of arrestees. Its data, which was cited by the MPI research paper, does indeed show that undocumented immigrants had significantly lower felony arrest rates involving violent, property, drug, and traffic crimes compared to U.S.-born citizens. (Despite this data from his own state agency, Gov. Greg Abbott continues to claim that criminals of all sorts, including hundreds of people on the terrorist watch list, are among the undocumented immigrants entering the U.S.).

• A 2023 analysis by the conservative-leaning libertarian Cato Institute found that illegal immigrants were half as likely to be imprisoned as native-born Americans. Between 2013 and 2022, the analysis found, illegal immigrants were 26 percent less likely than native-born Americans to be convicted of homicide in Texas (another slap at Abbott’s claims).

• A 2017 study published in the American Journal of Public Health found that between 1990 and 2014, areas with heavy concentrations of undocumented immigrants had fewer arrests for drunk driving and drug-related crimes, and no increases in homicide, robbery, and assault rates. There also were fewer drug deaths reported.

Long before the southern border exploded, legal Italian and Jewish immigrants were deeply involved in the most heinous crimes, and on a national scale. Heading the list was the Sicilian-born “Father of Modern Organized Crime,” Charles “Lucky” Luciano. Together with his strategic partner, the financial mastermind Meyer Lansky, he restructured the American Mafia into a more organized and business-like entity, expanding its activities beyond bootlegging into such profitable areas as gambling, prostitution, drug trafficking, loan sharking, and labor racketeering.

Lansky was the brains behind many of Luciano’s innovations and criminal enterprises.

These two men grew up on the Lower East Side and were lifelong friends. A third lifelong friend served as their enforcer. His name was Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel. (His yahrzeit plaque is clearly visible near the exit of the Bialystoker Synagogue’s main sanctuary.)

Bugsy helped to establish the infamous Murder Inc., which did 1,000 or so contract killings for Luciano and other Mafia figures over the years. Murder Inc. was led by a yeshivah bocher, no less, and the only major mob boss ever to be executed by the federal government — Louis “Lepke” Buchalter. (He attended the Rabbi Jacob Joseph Yeshivah, which I attended decades later). By Lepke’s side was Albert Anastasia, the “Mad Hatter” who was killed in a hotel barbershop in 1957. Murder Inc.’s leading hitman was Abe Reles, who would fall from a sixth-floor window of the Half Moon Hotel in Coney Island in 1941 while in protective police custody.

There were others scattered around the United States. Abe Bernstein ran Detroit’s Purple Gang and later ran the mob’s gambling operations in Miami. Isador Blumenfeld ran the Minneapolis mob, while Meyer “Mickey” Cohen (whom the evangelist Billy Graham tried to convert in front of a packed Madison Square Garden crowd) played that role in Los Angeles.

In New York City, Arthur Simon Flegenheimer, a/k/a Dutch Schultz, ran things for the mob.

None of the undocumented immigrants trying to get into this country from Mexico come close to this collection of criminals — not in status and not in the crimes so few of them commit.

The Torah is very specific about how we are to protect the stranger who comes among us, fleeing from totalitarianism and persecution. It refers to this person as “a runaway slave,” a person who is fleeing from a slaveowner’s totalitarianism and persecution. The Torah tells us:

“You shall not hand over to his master a slave who has escaped from his master to you. He shall dwell with you, in your midst, in the place that he chooses…where it is good for him; you shall not mistreat him.” (See Deuteronomy 23:15–16.) No interpretation is required.

Except for Native Americans, all of us are émigrés or their descendants. There but for the grace of God go we all.

Shammai Engelmayer is a rabbi-emeritus of Congregation Beth Israel of the Palisades and an adult education teacher in Bergen County. He is the author of eight books and the winner of 10 awards for his commentaries. His website is www.shammai.org.