美国国家公共电台 NPR Spotlight On Migrant Crimes Drums Up Support For Trump's Immigration Dragnet

 

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

President Trump¹ regularly spotlights² violent crimes committed by immigrants in the country illegally. His administration has pledged to deport³ more of these so-called bad hombres. That outrage⁴ is increasingly bubbling up in communities across this country, but to what end? NPR's John Burnett has our story.

JOHN BURNETT, BYLINE⁵: Early last month, San Antonio residents listening to the evening news on KENS⁶ TV heard a particularly grim crime story.

(SOUNDBITE OF NEWS BROADCAST)

UNIDENTIFIED NEWS ANCHOR #1: Good evening. A man charged with shooting and killing⁷ a pregnant teen is now behind bars.

UNIDENTIFIED NEWS ANCHOR #2: Police arrested 35-year-old Armando Rodrigo Garcia-Ramirez (ph) for shooting and killing 15-year-old Jennifer Delgado.

BURNETT: Police said the slain⁸ teenager was nine months pregnant with the man's child. The fetus⁹ died too. Today, Garcia-Ramirez is charged with double capital murder. And there's more. Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirms that he's a Mexican national who was in the United States illegally. Under the Obama administration, Garcia-Ramirez was twice picked up by immigration agents, released both times and later granted a work permit.

The San-Antonio-pregnant-teenager double murder enraged¹⁰ conservatives across the spectrum¹¹. In Washington, Senator Charles Grassley, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee that oversees¹² immigration, fired off a letter to ICE demanding answers. Breitbart featured the story prominently, and it popped up on scores of right-wing websites.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

GEORGE RODRIGUEZ: Howdy, howdy, my friends. George Rodriguez, El Conservador, talking to you from San Antonio deep in the heart of south Texas. Let's talk about immigration news today.

BURNETT: George Rodriguez writes a blog and does an Internet radio show under the name El Conservador, the conservative. Once a week, he writes about the worst crimes he can find committed by unauthorized immigrants. He sat down for an interview last week.

RODRIGUEZ: And once a week, I come up with at least five, six of them committed in diverse places, like Minnesota. There was a case in Massachusetts not too long ago that I read about where a teacher was murdered by her illegal immigrant boyfriend. They're everywhere.

BURNETT: The boyfriend in that case has pleaded not guilty. No one argues these are serious crimes, and the victims deserve our sympathy. But critics believe that focusing on the birthplace and immigration status of a criminal demonizes all unauthorized immigrants.

JONATHAN RYAN: This attempt to use an anecdote¹³ to try to set up a false paradigm¹⁴ that there are good immigrants or bad immigrants is really just an attempt to call all immigrants bad.

BURNETT: Jonathan Ryan is an immigration attorney in San Antonio and director of a nonprofit called RAICES that advocates for immigrants. He sits in a coffee shop for an interview. The point Ryan and others make is that a defendant¹⁵ should be charged, tried and adjudicated on the facts of the crime, not his immigration status.

RYAN: We undermine that criminal justice system. By saying that immigrants need some kind of separate system of justice, what we're really doing is saying that we don't trust and we don't believe in our own Constitution that affords fundamental rights, including due process, to all people in this country - immigrant, nonimmigrant.

BURNETT: But wait. Immigration hardliners insist that's not their point. El Conservador blogger George Rodriguez returns to the San Antonio murders.

RODRIGUEZ: If he had been detained and deported¹⁶ for being here illegally the first time around, the impregnation, the murder, the crime would have been avoided.

BURNETT: What the public should be outraged¹⁷ about is the uneven¹⁸ enforcement of immigration laws, says Jessica Vaughan. She tweets prolifically¹⁹ on immigrant crimes at the Center for Immigration Studies, which supports Trump's crackdown.

JESSICA VAUGHAN: But I don't think that that translates into a generalized hostility²⁰ toward immigrants.

BURNETT: For well over a century, immigrants have faced hostility in the United States, going back to Italians, Poles and Irish. Social science research stretching back almost as far has consistently found there is no link between immigrants and criminality. The contemporary question is whether studies find a correlation²¹ between immigrants who are here unlawfully and crime.

On this question, there is a paucity²² of research. Bianca Bersani, a criminologist at the University of Massachusetts Boston, investigates immigration and crime. She says more and more researchers are looking at this subset of unauthorized immigrants who are much in the news. And as data become available...

BIANCA BERSANI: So far, the research is not finding that the undocumented is offending or being re-arrested at rates that are any different from the U.S.-born population.

BURNETT: What is certain is the abundance of attention being paid to the worst immigrant crimes, whether justified²³ or not, helps to drum up support for the president's aggressive immigration dragnet. John Burnett, NPR News, San Antonio.

1 trump   

n.王牌，法宝；v.打出王牌，吹喇叭

参考例句：

• He was never able to trump up the courage to have a showdown.他始终鼓不起勇气摊牌。
• The coach saved his star player for a trump card.教练保留他的明星选手，作为他的王牌。

2 spotlights   

n.聚光灯（的光）( spotlight的名词复数 )；公众注意的中心v.聚光照明( spotlight的第三人称单数 )；使公众注意，使突出醒目

参考例句：

• The room was lit by spotlights. 房间被聚光灯照亮。
• The dazzle of the spotlights made him ill at ease. 聚光灯的耀眼强光使他局促不安。 来自辞典例句

3 deport   

vt.驱逐出境

参考例句：

• We deport aliens who slip across our borders.我们把偷渡入境的外国人驱逐出境。
• More than 240 England football fans are being deported from Italy following riots last night.昨晚的骚乱发生后有240多名英格兰球迷被驱逐出意大利。

4 outrage   

n.暴行，侮辱，愤怒；vt.凌辱，激怒

参考例句：

• When he heard the news he reacted with a sense of outrage.他得悉此事时义愤填膺。
• We should never forget the outrage committed by the Japanese invaders.我们永远都不应该忘记日本侵略者犯下的暴行。

5 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

6 kens   

vt.知道（ken的第三人称单数形式）

参考例句：

• Dominie Deasy kens them a'. 迪希先生全都认得。 来自互联网

7 killing   

n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财

参考例句：

• Investors are set to make a killing from the sell-off.投资者准备清仓以便大赚一笔。
• Last week my brother made a killing on Wall Street.上个周我兄弟在华尔街赚了一大笔。

8 slain   

杀死，宰杀，杀戮( slay的过去分词 )； (slay的过去分词)

参考例句：

• The soldiers slain in the battle were burried that night. 在那天夜晚埋葬了在战斗中牺牲了的战士。
• His boy was dead, slain by the hand of the false Amulius. 他的儿子被奸诈的阿缪利乌斯杀死了。

9 fetus   

n.胎，胎儿

参考例句：

• In the fetus,blood cells are formed in different sites at different ages.胎儿的血细胞在不同时期生成在不同的部位。
• No one knows why a fetus is not automatically rejected by the mother's immune system. 没有人知道为什么母亲的免疫系统不会自动排斥胎儿。

10 enraged   

使暴怒( enrage的过去式和过去分词 )； 歜； 激愤

参考例句：

• I was enraged to find they had disobeyed my orders. 发现他们违抗了我的命令，我极为恼火。
• The judge was enraged and stroke the table for several times. 大法官被气得连连拍案。

11 spectrum   

n.谱，光谱，频谱；范围，幅度，系列

参考例句：

• This is a kind of atomic spectrum.这是一种原子光谱。
• We have known much of the constitution of the solar spectrum.关于太阳光谱的构成，我们已了解不少。

12 oversees   

v.监督，监视( oversee的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• She oversees both the research and the manufacturing departments. 她既监督研究部门又监督生产部门。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The Department of Education oversees the federal programs dealing with education. 教育部监管处理教育的联邦程序。 来自互联网

13 anecdote   

n.轶事，趣闻，短故事

参考例句：

• He departed from the text to tell an anecdote.他偏离课文讲起了一则轶事。
• It had never been more than a family anecdote.那不过是个家庭趣谈罢了。

14 paradigm   

n.例子，模范，词形变化表

参考例句：

• He had become the paradigm of the successful man. 他已经成为成功人士的典范。
• Moreover,the results of this research can be the new learning paradigm for digital design studios.除此之外，本研究的研究成果也可以为数位设计课程建立一个新的学习范例。

15 defendant   

n.被告；adj.处于被告地位的

参考例句：

• The judge rejected a bribe from the defendant's family.法官拒收被告家属的贿赂。
• The defendant was borne down by the weight of evidence.有力的证据使被告认输了。

16 deported   

v.将…驱逐出境( deport的过去式和过去分词 )；举止

参考例句：

• They stripped me of my citizenship and deported me. 他们剥夺我的公民资格，将我驱逐出境。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The convicts were deported to a deserted island. 罪犯们被流放到一个荒岛。 来自《简明英汉词典》

17 outraged   

a.震惊的，义愤填膺的

参考例句：

• Members of Parliament were outraged by the news of the assassination. 议会议员们被这暗杀的消息激怒了。
• He was outraged by their behavior. 他们的行为使他感到愤慨。

18 uneven   

adj.不平坦的，不规则的，不均匀的

参考例句：

• The sidewalk is very uneven—be careful where you walk.这人行道凹凸不平—走路时请小心。
• The country was noted for its uneven distribution of land resources.这个国家以土地资源分布不均匀出名。

19 prolifically   

adv.多产地，丰富地

参考例句：

• He wrote prolifically both in Ireland and England, nearly constantly shuttling from one to the other. 他几乎不断穿梭于爱尔兰和英国之间，并在两地写出大量作品。 来自互联网
• He had directed his first film in 1923 and had worked prolifically throughout the silent era. 1923年，沟口健二执导了他的处女作，在之后的整个默片时代里，他创作了大量作品。 来自互联网

20 hostility   

n.敌对，敌意；抵制［pl.］交战，战争

参考例句：

• There is open hostility between the two leaders.两位领导人表现出公开的敌意。
• His hostility to your plan is well known.他对你的计划所持的敌意是众所周知的。

21 correlation   

n.相互关系，相关，关连

参考例句：

• The second group of measurements had a high correlation with the first.第二组测量数据与第一组高度相关。
• A high correlation exists in America between education and economic position.教育和经济地位在美国有极密切的关系。

22 paucity   

n.小量，缺乏

参考例句：

• The paucity of fruit was caused by the drought.水果缺乏是由于干旱造成的。
• The results are often unsatisfactory because of the paucity of cells.因细胞稀少，结果常令人不满意。

23 justified   

a.正当的，有理的

参考例句：

• She felt fully justified in asking for her money back. 她认为有充分的理由要求退款。
• The prisoner has certainly justified his claims by his actions. 那个囚犯确实已用自己的行动表明他的要求是正当的。