For years, the legacy media (hereinafter the “Leg-Meds”) parroted the Democrats’ line that the population of immigrants can be divided into the “documented” ones and the “undocumented” ones.
The euphemism “undocumented” finally became a joke, and so the Leg-Meds and the other Democrats eventually surrendered to the word “illegal.”
However, within that category of “illegals,” they clung (bitterly) to the notion that about 99.9999999% were “law-abiding” and only the remaining 0.0000001% were criminals.
That lie was called out yesterday by President Trump’s new press secretary. This 27-year-old woman owned the Leg-Meds. Here’s the exchange:
REPORTER: Of the 3,500 arrests ICE has made so far since President Trump came back onto office, can you just tell me the numbers? How many have a criminal record versus those who are in the country illegally?
KAROLINE LEAVITT: All of them [have a criminal record] because they are criminals as far as this administration goes.
She’s right. Here’s the text of 18 U.S.Code Section 1325:
(a)Improper time or place; avoidance of examination or inspection; misrepresentation and concealment of facts
Any alien who (1) enters or attempts to enter the United States at any time or place other than as designated by immigration officers, or (2) eludes examination or inspection by immigration officers, or (3) attempts to enter or obtains entry to the United States by a willfully false or misleading representation or the willful concealment of a material fact, shall, for the first commission of any such offense, be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than 6 months, or both, and, for a subsequent commission of any such offense, be fined under title 18, or imprisoned not more than 2 years, or both.
This quoted section clearly and unambiguously sets out criminal penalties including prison time for illegally entering the country. Imprisonment is only for crimes. You can’t be imprisoned for a mere civil violation of the law.
(If the entry was legal, but the ongoing presence in the country is not, as with a student overstaying his visa, the issue is more complicated. That’s probably why the next subsection sets out civil penalties — rather than criminal penalties — for that circumstance. But the vast majority of illegals are not students overstaying their visas; they are people who snuck across the border.)
Therefore, people who enter this country illegally are illegals – and criminals. It is accurate to refer to them as such. The most precise term for them would be “criminal immigrants.”
the Aspen beat 
What illegal immigration will do is act as a deterrent to innovation. If cheap labor is available, as Nancy Pelosi tells us, America’s crops are more likely to be harvested in time for her to eat them.
If they do not respect the laws of this nation on day one, why would we expect them to respect the laws of the United States of America in the future?
I like the term criminal aliens.
P.S. I’ve long thought that a great way to deplete our nation of these millions upon millions of criminal aliens would be to introduce a bit of competitive free enterprise into the process.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement could offer bounties for these criminal aliens. Lists of deportable aliens could be publicly released with biographical dossiers for each deportable alien.
Private bounty hunters would then be motivated to search, track and capture these aliens … to be paid their bounties when turned over to the applicable federal authorities.
Funding for these bounties could come off of a federal fee that comes off of every foreign remittance fund transfer that is done from a party in the U.S. to a party in whatever countries are designated as particularly troublesome when it comes to America’s immigration and border crisis.
Some of the billions raised from these fees could also be used to build and maintain secure border walls, on BOTH north and south borders. (I just don’t trust those Canadians either.)
Crimaliens to Gitmo
While we’re at it, why not incentivize the illegals to turn in the people they came with? They know who they are and who the organizers were. Tell them that for every illegal they turn in, they get to stay another day.