On July 28, KHOW-AM radio host Peter Boyles and guest Jim Gilchrist repeated several dubious claims regarding illegal immigration. Gilchrist claimed that an immigration reform bill passed by the U.S. Senate would be a “green light for 120 to 150 million -- and some experts suggest it could be even over 200 million ... illegal aliens coming in here over the next 20 years.” Boyles repeated his own inaccurate assertion that, with regard to illegal immigrants, “Denver is a sanctuary city.” And Gilchrist repeated the dubious claim, which he attributed to Rep. Steve King (R-IA), that “28,000 Americans have been killed at the hands of illegal aliens since 9-11.”

Gilchrist is the founder of the Minuteman Project, which describes itself as a “citizens' Vigilance Operation monitoring immigration, business, and government” and is best known for volunteer patrols along the U.S.-Mexico border that, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, have drawn support from white supremacist groups. He and Jerome Corsi, who appeared with Gilchrist on Boyles's show, are co-authors of Minutemen: The Battle to Secure America's Borders (World Ahead Publishing, July 2006). Corsi is also the co-author of Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry (Regnery, 2004).

Gilchrist's dubious prediction of “120 to 150 million ... illegal aliens coming in here over the next 20 years” as a consequence of Senate immigration legislation contrasts with a study by Robert Rector, a senior fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation. That study estimated the extent of legal -- not illegal -- immigration that would result from the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006 (S.2611) passed by the Senate earlier this year. Rector's initial “best” estimate put the total at 103 million over 20 years. (Rector also included a “maximum” figure of 193 million over 20 years.) Rector scaled his estimate back to 66 million upon the adoption on May 16 of an amendment that reduced the number guest workers allowed under the Senate plan. The amended bill passed the Senate on May 25. The study did not predict any increase in illegal immigration following enactment of the legislation:

All of the immigration discussed to this point would be legal immigration. If illegal immigration continued after enactment of S.2611, the inflow of immigrants would be even greater. Although illegal immigration is considered a major problem, the proposed legal immigration under CIRA would dwarf it numerically. The net inflow of illegal immigrants into the U.S. population is around 700,000 per year. Legal immigration under CIRA would exceed five million per year, seven times the rate of the current illegal immigration flow. Annual legal and illegal immigration together now equals about 1.7 million; future legal immigration alone under CIRA would be three times this amount.

Rector's conclusions claiming an increase in legal immigration are themselves highly dubious. As Colorado Media Matters has noted, a June 20 San Francisco Chronicle article reported that Rector's study was challenged by skeptics who “noted that [Rector's original estimate of] 100 million is the equivalent of almost the entire population of Mexico.” The Chronicle further reported that according to “demographers,” "[e]ven Rector's newer number of 66 million over 20 years, adjusted for the Senate's changes, seems wrong on its face" and that the 66 million estimate “would imply 3.3 million new immigrants a year, more than three times the 1 million now admitted annually, and far above historic norms.” According to the article, Carl Haub, senior demographer for the Population Reference Bureau said, “That just can't be.”

Further, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a report that concluded that the Senate bill, prior to the amendment reducing the number of guest workers, would increase immigration levels by “nearly 8 million residents by 2016.” This contrasts with Rector's estimate that, as a consequence of the unamended bill, over the same 10-year period the influx of immigrants would total 49 million.

In addition, Boyles's statement that “Denver is a sanctuary city” is the latest in a pattern that Colorado Media Matters has previously noted. A Colorado statute enacted May 1 prohibiting so-called “sanctuary” policies defines such policies as “local government ordinances or policies that prohibit local officials, including peace officers, from communicating or cooperating with federal officials with regard to the immigration status of any person within the state.” In contrast to Boyles's assertion that “Denver is a sanctuary city,” a June 11 Rocky Mountain News article quoted Carl Rusnok, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) spokesman for Colorado, saying: “There aren't any cities in Colorado that refuse to call us. ... I know of no Colorado city that has a policy against calling ICE.”

On Boyles's show, Gilchrist asserted that “according to Congressman Steven King from Iowa and law enforcement statistics, about 28,000 Americans have been killed at the hands of illegal aliens since 9-11.” Gilchrist said that “Congressman Steve King out of Iowa will have the exact source of those figures.”

In fact, King based this figure on a dubious extrapolation from a 2005 Government Accountability Office (GAO) study showing that illegal aliens comprise approximately 28 percent of the United States prison population. In a May 3 speech on the floor of the House of Representatives, King claimed that because illegal immigrants comprise 28 percent of the U.S. prison population, “that means 28 percent of the murders, 28 percent of the rapes, 28 percent of the violence and the assaults and battery, first- and second-degree murder and also manslaughter attacks are committed by criminal aliens.”

In a speech to the Wake Up America Foundation's Unite to Fight Summit on May 27, King said he used the assumption that illegal aliens commit 28 percent of each category of crime to extrapolate his estimate of 28,000 American deaths that illegal immigrants have caused since September 11, 2001:

KING: That GAO study that I had done supports those numbers. I went through it thoroughly. Between the cities, the counties, the state and the federal penitentiaries, that study -- my study shows 28 percent are criminal aliens. Now, if you extrapolate that across the crimes that are committed, between first- and second-degree murder and manslaughter -- willful, violent, death -- that number comes to, on average, 12 Americans a day die at the hands of those who come into this country that, if we'd enforced our borders, would not be here to commit the crime. That's the violent ones. That's the willful ones. There's another 13 every day that die in a wreck because of negligent homicide, because of victims of drunk drivers who should not be here in this country. That's 25 Americans a day -- that number since September 11 exceeds 28,000.

(In the same May 27 speech, King characterized the deaths that illegal immigrants inflict on Americans as a “slow motion holocaust.”)

From the July 28 broadcast of KHOW-AM's The Peter Boyles Show:

GILCHRIST: [A]ccording to Congressman Steven King from Iowa and law enforcement statistics, about 28,000 Americans have been killed at the hands of illegal aliens since 9/11 --

BOYLES: What's the number again? Jim, what's the --?

GILCHRIST: Approximately 28,000. Roughly 28,000 people in the United States have fallen victim to murder, manslaughter or death --

BOYLES: Source?

GILCHRIST: It would be, I believe, FBI statistics --

BOYLES: OK.

GILCHRIST: -- and Congressman Steve King out of Iowa will have the exact source of those figures.

[...]

GILCHRIST: Peter, it gets worse --

BOYLES: I agree.

GILCHRIST: By the year -- with the U.S. Senate pushing the amnesty for the 30 million illegal aliens --

BOYLES: Yes.

GILCHRIST: -- currently occupying U.S. territory. That is the green light for 120 to 150 million -- and some experts suggest it could be even over 200 million --

BOYLES: Before it's over.

GILCHRIST: -- illegal aliens coming in here over the next 20 years. That's two decades. That rapidly. At the accelerated rate of illegal invasion that's going on now, that is a very realistic figure.

[...]

BOYLES: And we have a local Speaker of the House here by the name of Andrew Romanoff. It's a clown show because Denver is a sanctuary city, proclaimed so by former Mayor [Wellington] Webb. And ask him about sanctuary policy and, jeez, he just didn't know anything about it.