[Cross-posted from ImmigrationProf Blog]
By Kevin R. Johnson
News outlets across the nation last week reported on a tragedy in Sacramento. On a supervised visit, a father killed three children, and a chaperone, before killing himself at a church.
Sadly, news outlets and political leaders now are trying to make immigration an issue by highlighting the fact that the father was an undocumented immigrant from Mexico. This kind of sensationalism unfortunately is nothing new and occurs regularly in high profile cases involving immigrants. One should ask the question what his immigration status had to do with the horrible crime?
A local Sacramento news station reported that:
"The gunman who killed his three daughters, a chaperone who was supervising his visit with the children and himself in a Sacramento County church was known to have struggled with mental health issues, officials said.
New details also reveal that David Mora Rojas, 39, also used a `ghost gun' in the shooting. Mora Rojas also overstayed his visa after entering California from his native Mexico on Dec. 17, 2018, on a non-immigrant visitor visa, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Alethea Smock told The Associated Press."
As the local report noted, the Associated Press appears to be the source about Rojas' immigration status.
Although mental health issues, not immigration status, appears to have directly resulted in the killings, Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones, who is running for Congress, says U.S. immigration policies and California’s sanctuary law somehow are to blame for the deadly church shootings.
"They’ll call me racist and evil," Jones wrote in a Facebook post. "But let me be perfectly clear, there is only ONE thing that allowed this horrific tragedy to occur with certainty: the deplorable state of our national immigration policies, and California’s Sanctuary State Laws."
The killings of the young people in a church by all appearances are a tragedy. We all should think about how it happened and how such tragedies could be avoided. For example, mental health crisis services are not as well funded and accessible as they perhaps should be. Oddly, rather than focus on mental health, news agencies have been broadcasting the father's immigration status and tapping into passions for the purpose of exploitation. President Trump tapped into similar passions, for example, characterizing Mexican immigrants as "criminals" and "rapists."
The truth of the matter is that Mora's immigration status had absolutely nothing to do with his criminal acts.
Although immigrants commit crimes, studies consistently show that immigrants commit crimes at lesser rates than native born U.S. citizens. News stories that focus on immigration status of alleged criminal perpetrators help reinforce stereotypes that immigrants are predisposed to crime, which is simply not true.
Immigrant rights advocates do not claim that immigrants who commit crimes should not be held accountable. No one could reasonably say that the perpetrator of a crime like that which occurred in the Sacramento church -- immigrant or not -- should not face criminal charges. With the alleged perpetrator dead, that is not possible in this case. Rather than chase immigration ghosts, we should think hard about how we can act to avoid tragic deaths of young people in the future.
