When the cardinal of Guadalajara, Mexico, was gunned down by henchmen in an international drug gang, he became one more statistic among thousands of victims of criminals who consider the world their base and unflinchingly target anybody in their way. Others less prominent than Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo, be they law-enforcement officers, criminal rivals, or even children, are murdered by the gangs without hesitation. The tentacles of organized crime are becoming evermore tangled and global. The gangsters charged with murdering the church leader last May smuggle drugs from Thailand and Colombia, through Mexico and into the United States, with the help of gang members in San Diego.
Crime in the United States increasingly has a foreign face. Everyday life has become a lot more dangerous for everybody, as the rise of alien criminal groups has paralleled alarming rates of murder and other violent crimes.
Too many outlaws in other countries view the United States as a "promised land" they can easily enter. To wit, the Federal Bureau of Prisons says that one-quarter of federal inmates are foreign born, way out of proportion to the 7 percent of the population who are foreign nationals.
There is no sign that things will get any better. In fact, all indications are that crime by foreign gangs will worsen before law-enforcement agencies--which often do not have officers who speak the languages of immigrant criminals--can begin to solve the problem. The gangs grow so fast that they do much damage before law-enforcement agencies can even determine their existence.
No one says that all foreigners are criminals, but it is clear that too many lawbreakers sail through loopholes in the immigration system.
"Not everyone who comes to this country has the best of intentions," says John Tanton, founder of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), a group that seeks tighter limits on immigration. "We should try to do a much better job of screening out people," he emphasizes.
STATISTICS LACKING
Although they admit that crime by foreigners is out of control, federal and local officials have few statistics about it. The FBI, for instance, does not collect information on immigrant crime. One thing, however, can be concluded: Ethnic mafias orchestrate crime by their nationals, often specializing in activities or regions.
The family of Manuel de Dios Unanue knows too well the power of such insidious gangs. De Dios, a journalist who crusaded against Colombian drug gangs, was sitting in a Queens
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