Does illegal immigration lead to other illegal acts?

The Southern Poverty Law Center routinely condemns those insensitive brutes who notice that illegal immigration leads to other illegal activities, from indentity theft, human trafficking, and drug smuggling. Here's a sampling of some of the "the purveyors" of such notions, as compiled by the SPLC's Heidi Beirich:

Dan Stein, executive director of the supposedly mainstream immigration restriction organization Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), claimed in a March 8 press release that illegal immigration poses "a real and documentable risk" to Americans. "Illegal aliens are more prone to criminal activity than the rest of the population," Stein said. Twenty-three days later, Jim Gilchrist, co-founder of the vigilante Minuteman Project, told an audience that it was "okay to say 'rapist,' 'robber' and 'murderer'" when describing "illegal aliens."

Heidi informs us that "These kinds of 'facts' generally originate with modern nativist groups and ideologues like Cosman or even unabashedly race-based hate groups ..."

But there's a problem with that conclusion. It's not just what the SPLC considers to be "hate groups" making such observations. Now we can add two more such purveyors to the list:

Federal officials said Monday that Gwinnett [Georgia] is now the focal point of competing metro area Mexican drug cartels trafficking cocaine and methamphetamines due to its burgeoning Hispanic population and transportation infrastructure.

And in the last 90 days, there has been an uptick in brutal violence borne out of the trade that once was sequestered inside the Mexican border.

"These traffickers unleash ruthless forms of violence in order to protect and defend their drugs and cash," said Rod Benson, special agent in charge of the Atlanta's Drug Enforcement Office office.

There you have it. So it's not only "nativists" who recognize that uncontrolled immigration from Latin America leads to spiralling crime, but State and Federal law enforcement officials, too.

Look for law enforcement to be branded as a hate crime any day now.