‘Violent Immigrants’ May Be Less ‘Violent’ Than They Look

'Violent' is a term of art in criminal law and certain crimes labeled 'violent' involve no violence at all. 

Mohamadou Lamine Mbacke (Photo via ICE)

Feeding into the President’s narrative that immigrants make the U.S. a more dangerous place, last week, national news featured a story about a “violent deportee” who escaped custody at Kennedy Airport.

Mohamadou Lamine Mbacke was being deported back to Senegal when, while waiting to board the plane, he walked away from ICE agents (they’d uncuffed him for the flight), left the terminal, hailed a yellow cab, and high-tailed it out of New York.

The media went crazy. A “violent deportee” potentially “armed and dangerous” escaped his guards at JFK airport and was on the loose, reports said.  A picture of him flashed across news sites around the country — “If you see this man, call police immediately.”  A national manhunt began.

Two days later, in one of the most uneventful captures in escapee history, police arrested the “violent deportee” at a Chicago Starbucks calmly sipping a grande black.  A half-dozen officers trooped in and walked out minutes later with a willing Mbacke after some quiet whispering.  He’ll soon face new charges in the Eastern District of New York for escape and at some point be deported.

The irony is Mbacke wasn’t violent, at least not in the sense most people think.  Rapists and murderers who’ve escaped up-state penitentiaries and were facing life sentences — now, they’d be violent felons who might do anything to resist arrest.  That wasn’t Mbacke.

Mbacke was called a “violent deportee” because technically a crime he’d committed was “violent.”  But “violent” is a term of art in criminal law and certain crimes labeled “violent” involve no violence at all.  For example, if you crawl through a broken window at Wendy’s after- hours to grab some food — that’s “violent.”  Burglary is a “violent” crime: whether you pull out a weapon and scare people in their apartment or shop-lift at Sephora and accidentally knock someone over on your rush to get out — you’re a “violent felon” if convicted.

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Mbacke was said to have a past weapons possession conviction, but that could have amounted to possession of a box cutter or a gravity knife for a legitimate purpose.  It’s unclear what the “weapons” actually were, but it’s clear he never brandished them or attempted to hurt anyone with them. Yet, he was labeled “violent.”

He came to the U.S. legally in 2005, had several arrests, and was acquitted after trial of a charge of sexual abuse. According to his attorney, Mbacke was “a very nice young man.”  He’d either overstayed his visa or violated the terms of his stay by being arrested and was therefore ordered deported.   But whatever the reason, it appears the label “violent deportee” was in name only. The media hullabaloo warning people to “be on the lookout” and “lock their doors” was overblown and played on many people’s fears that immigrants are dangerous.

Coincidentally, hype about the case coincided with the release of a report by social scientists at four universities comparing immigration rates with crime rates for 200 metropolitan areas.  They looked at numbers for several decades and compared growth of immigrants to growth of crime.  According to the study, the majority of areas that saw their immigrant numbers get bigger, actually saw a drop in violent crime.  In other words, there was an inverse ratio — as the immigrant population grew, the violent crime numbers fell. The study compared crime data of a cross-section of urban areas as diverse as New York City and Muncie, Indiana.

There’s two possibilities about what to take away from the report: Either the growth of immigrant populations actually helps crime decrease (contrary to President Trump’s perception) or, there simply is no correlation between immigrant growth and crime.

Drawing parallels between immigrants and crime is simply not borne out by the data.  Like the Mbacke “violent deportee” scare, and the call by the media to “Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid” — maybe the real lesson here is that there’s always a story behind the story, if we just take the time to look.

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Toni Messina has tried over 100 cases and has been practicing criminal law and immigration since 1990. You can follow her on Twitter: @tonitamess.