TX Dept of Public Safety — The State of Texas has averaged over 71,000 total criminal arrests per month in local Texas jails since February 2012. Over that same period, more than 8% of the total arrests per month are foreign nationals, regardless of immigration status. That 8% equates to an average of 5,932 individual criminal aliens arrested per month. Within that criminal alien total, over 40% are recidivists – meaning they have at least one prior criminal arrest in Texas and were identified as a criminal alien at that time. There are two possible avenues to fall in the recidivist category: 1) the criminal alien was arrested, released from jail, and reoffended; or 2) the criminal alien was arrested, deported, reentered the United States, and reoffended. The chart below depicts those monthly statistics from February 2012 through July 2014. The program for monitoring criminal alien arrests in Texas began in October 2008. From October 2008 through August 1, 2014, Texas has identified a total of 207,076 unique criminal alien defendants booked into Texas county jails. Over their criminal careers, these defendants are responsible for at least 652,979 individual criminal charges in Texas. All charges reported to DPS must be supported by fingerprints. While DPS maintains offenses ranging from Class C misdemeanors to Capital felonies, the Class C misdemeanors make up only 6% of the criminal alien charges. More than half of the charges are Class A misdemeanors and felonies, including 3,089 homicides and 8,070 sexual assaults as seen on the chart below. [Read More]