{"id":1413422,"date":"2022-03-31T15:59:36","date_gmt":"2022-03-31T19:59:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1413422"},"modified":"2022-03-31T15:59:40","modified_gmt":"2022-03-31T19:59:40","slug":"inside-the-rise-of-crime-tourism-how-liberal-policies-helped-create-a-new-criminal-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/inside-the-rise-of-crime-tourism-how-liberal-policies-helped-create-a-new-criminal-industry\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside The Rise Of \u2018Crime Tourism\u2019: How Liberal Policies Helped Create A New Criminal Industry"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">30<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Finside-the-rise-of-crime-tourism-how-liberal-policies-helped-create-a-new-criminal-industry%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1413422&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/dw-wp-production.imgix.net\/2022\/03\/crime.jpg?w=1200&#038;h=800&#038;ixlib=react-9.3.0\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" alt=\"image\" \/><\/div>\n<p>When criminals take advantage of America\u2019s lax immigration laws, it\u2019s usually the poor and vulnerable who pay the price. But a new crime wave is targeting the wealthiest elements of society, often in Democratic states and sanctuary cities. Police officers blame this nationwide surge in so-called \u201ccrime tourism\u201d on South American gangs exploiting loopholes in immigration law \u2014 and low-bail or no-bail policies in liberal states \u2014 to victimize affluent suburbs.<\/p>\n<p>This years-long burglary spree has cost Americans untold millions of dollars, yet no one seems prepared to altar the statutes that incentivize this behavior.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Crime tourism by South American Theft Groups (SATGs)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Police from California to New York are warning about an increasing number of burglaries by South American Theft Groups (SATGs). These criminal enterprises recruit burglars in South America to enter the United States through a specific immigration loophole. The program allows people from 40 countries to arrive on U.S. soil for short-term tourism or business without a visa. Some in Chile, the only South American country on the list, have seen this as an invitation to export terrorism and import high-end U.S. goods.<\/p>\n<p>Once on U.S. soil, thieves reportedly join in cells of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/dc-md-va\/2022\/01\/11\/burglaries-crime-tourists-target-asians\/\">two to eight people<\/a> for the purposes of committing grand theft in wealthy suburbs. They often rent expensive vehicles so they can blend in as they case the neighborhood and learn the homeowners\u2019 patterns. The perpetrators wait until they believe the homeowner is gone, or when family members are not currently inside their bedrooms, before breaking in.\u00a0Many take pains to enter through second-floor windows \u2014 some security systems only cover the ground floor \u2014 and they take jewelry, cash, even hoist full safes out of the walls to open at another location<strong>.<\/strong> Authorities say they regularly make off with $20,000 to $100,000 per crime.<\/p>\n<p>Some of the victims are well-known, and little-liked. Police say former \u201cFull House\u201d star Lori Loughlin and her husband, Mossimo Giannulli, lost <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2022\/01\/15\/thieves-steal-1m-in-jewelry-from-lori-loughlins-la-home\/\">$1 million<\/a>\u00a0after their home was robbed by a group of thieves believed to be from South America.<\/p>\n<p>Wealthy neighborhoods have become frequent targets. FBI spokesperson Laura Eimiller <a href=\"https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/local\/lanow\/la-me-chilean-burglars-robbery-fbi-crime-ring-20190423-story.html\">told<\/a> the Los Angeles Times in 2019, \u201cIt\u2019s a hot zone in Southern California.\u201d Detective Sergeant Michael Maher, supervisor of the Los Angeles County Sheriff\u2019s Department Major Crimes Bureau Burglary-Robbery Task Force, says he has noticed many crews of the robbers his task force has arrested were from Chile. The San Diego Sheriff\u2019s Department blamed SATGs for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mercurynews.com\/2022\/02\/01\/chilean-gangs-target-atherton-homes-police-chief-says\/\">60 burglaries<\/a> in less than a year.<\/p>\n<p>SATGs are also active on the other side of the sanctuary state, in the tony suburbs of San Francisco. Burglaries soared in the Bay Area suburb of Hillsborough (median household income: <a href=\"https:\/\/datausa.io\/profile\/geo\/hillsborough-ca\/\">$250,000<\/a>), from 30 last year to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcbayarea.com\/news\/local\/south-american-gangs-tied-to-string-of-peninsula-home-burglaries-police\/2809549\/\">20 in three months<\/a> in late 2021 and early 2022. In nearby Atherton (average household income in 2020: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sfgate.com\/expensive-san-francisco\/article\/atherton-richest-city-america-bay-area-15071085.php\">$525,000<\/a>), burglaries <a href=\"https:\/\/sfist.com\/2022\/02\/02\/six-atherton-homes-hit-with-burglary-tourism-by-chilean-gangs-out-of-l-a\/\">quadrupled<\/a> in January. Police in both cities have tied the surge to South American Theft Groups.<\/p>\n<p>But the problem has spread nationwide. Police in the D.C. suburbs of northern Virginia found one SATG that was responsible for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/dc-md-va\/2022\/01\/11\/burglaries-crime-tourists-target-asians\/\">100 robberies<\/a> in Fairfax and Montgomery Counties, with thefts totaling $3.6 million.<\/p>\n<p>South American Theft Groups, some based in places like Texas, have perpetrated hundreds of robberies nationwide. SATGs have plied their trade in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wkyc.com\/article\/news\/local\/local-burglaries-connected-to-international-theft-ring\/95-eabb7bac-6591-4421-ae98-28ae7bb7b082\">Cleveland<\/a>, Indianapolis, in the Detroit suburb of Grosse Pointe, in Henrico County, Virginia \u2014 which is the Richmond, Virginia, area. They\u2019re active wherever affluent people live.<\/p>\n<p>Police say one burglary team alone, led by Bryan Herrera Maldonado, traveled from California to Washington, dripped southward from Montana to Colorado, then toured the Midwest. SATGs have a broader reach than the Colombian drug cartels of old, said Andrew Hague, an assistant state attorney in Florida. \u201cYou knew the Colombian cartels were going through Miami, but I don\u2019t remember a cartel that had operations going countrywide or worldwide,\u201d he said. \u201cEverybody\u2019s getting hit.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The crime spree appears to have gone global. In 2018, police in the Toronto suburb of Halton pinned more than 400 burglaries on SATGs. In recent years, British police arrested an average of 100 Chileans a year, with some of the robberies targeting Premier League soccer players. Similar stories occurred in France, Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands. An FBI agent with knowledge of SATG\u2019s reach places the global cost in the tens of millions of dollars.<\/p>\n<p>Commander Erik Bushow of Ventura County, California, Sheriff\u2019s Office said the gangs usually strike when the house is empty and, though they\u2019re not known to be violent, their interlocking network of thieves represents a national menace. \u201cThis is crime tourism. They\u2019re coming here for the purpose of targeting neighborhoods, specifically vehicles, homes,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=0U1Yc66puE4\">said<\/a> Bushow. \u201cNot violent crimes, but they\u2019re going after the big bucks.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>When the criminals return to Chile, they \u201cshow off their money and luxury,\u201d said Chilean National Police\u2019s Jorge S\u00e1nchez Sandoval. This, in turn, \u201cmotivates their neighbors, who see the new cars and jewelry,\u201d to become the next wave of short-term burglars.<\/p>\n<p>Investigators believe the local nature of burglaries has obscured the fact that the thieves are the lowest rung of a far-flung criminal enterprise stretching across continents, if not oceans. \u201cThese individuals have tentacles that reach beyond what we had imagined, beyond house burglaries,\u201d said Jesus Bonilla, a police officer in Nassau County, New York. \u201cThe organizers, the higher-ups, are a small, tight-knit group \u2014 a handful of them. \u2026 It\u2019s a network we\u2019re trying to dismantle.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But those networks cannot be dismantled without abolishing the policies that attracted them to the United States in the first place.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Liberal policies invite \u2018criminal tourism\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>Immigration tourism<\/em>. SATGs have exploited a government immigration plan called the \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbp.gov\/travel\/international-visitors\/esta\">Electronic System for Travel Authorization<\/a>,\u201d which allows citizens in 40 countries to travel to the United States without a visa and stay up to 90 days. It costs less than $20 to apply, and some <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/dc-md-va\/2022\/01\/11\/burglaries-crime-tourists-target-asians\/\">contend<\/a> that tourists face reduced scrutiny by immigration authorities when they enter the country. The U.S. government added the only South American country, Chile, to the program in 2014, and experts say that is when SATGs began to surge.<\/p>\n<p><em>Sanctuary city\/state laws<\/em>. Some police believe these South American Theft Gangs target areas with sanctuary city status or weak immigration laws. Detective Steve Collett of the Simi Valley Police Department, who investigated a string of such burglaries in 2019, \u201csaid he believes California is a primary target for these theft crews due to California\u2019s status as a sanctuary state after the passage of SB 54, which limits how much local law enforcement agencies can cooperate with federal authorities in enforcing immigration law,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vcstar.com\/story\/news\/2020\/01\/24\/ventura-county-crime-burglary-arrests-foreign-theft-groups-chile\/2848182001\/\">reported<\/a> the Ventura County Star.<\/p>\n<p><em>Weak immigration laws<\/em>. Since the adoption of the ESTA program for Chile, many members of SATGs have\u00a0taken advantage of how easy it is to come to the U.S. illegally. \u201cThey get fictitious documents, IDs, residency cards, to claim they\u2019re legally here,\u201d an FBI agent <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vanityfair.com\/news\/2022\/02\/a-vast-burglary-ring-from-chile-has-been-targeting-wealthy-us-households\">told<\/a> Vanity Fair. Occasionally, the cells try to pass themselves off as Puerto Ricans, so they can stay in the United States and prolong their crime spree. Policies that make it easy for illegal aliens to take up residence in the U.S. make it easy for criminals to take up residence amongst them.<\/p>\n<p><em>No-bail\/low-bail policies<\/em>. One of the few overhead costs for SATGs comes when one of their footsoldiers gets arrested and must put up bail. Once the bail has been paid, the individual returns to Chile, and another thief takes his place. No-bail laws eliminate even this low cost of business \u2014 and the SATGs\u2019 recruiters know it. Five Chilean burglars arrested in Long Island in March 2020 \u201cbrazenly told arresting officers that their handler recruited them to burglarize\u00a0New York homes and that the risk of jail was low because of the state\u2019s new bail reform laws, which requires no bail for misdemeanors and many nonviolent crimes,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsday.com\/long-island\/crime\/chilean-burglary-ring-gold-coast-n76969\">reported<\/a> Newsday.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Evil does not discriminate<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>A conservative reader might be tempted to write this off as the cultural elites finally paying the price for their support of \u00a0open border policies, but this is the wrong reaction for at least two reasons. First, it is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=Proverbs+24%3A17&#038;version=KJV\">unseemly<\/a> to rejoice over the misfortunes of others. Second, if Jesus Bonilla rightly tied these burglaries to organized crime, then foreign syndicates will leverage the proceeds of these robberies to commit even more crime in their host nations \u2014 and these crimes will not occur only among the affluent. Evil does not long discriminate, as this wave of crime tourism proves.<\/p>\n<p><em>The Daily Wire is one of America\u2019s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a\u00a0<\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/subscribe\"><em>member<\/em><\/a><em>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When criminals take advantage of America\u2019s lax immigration laws, it\u2019s usually the poor and vulnerable who pay the price. But a new crime wave is targeting the wealthiest elements of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1413422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1413422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/76"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1413422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1413422\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1413422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1413422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1413422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}