Hey, let's make up some statistics so we can blame immigrants for more of our problems! And then let's plan events around those false statistics and get people riled up so they hate immigrants more!

That's what the FIRE coalition is doing. They've planned a national day of action around the false statistic that 25 americans (I'm pretty sure they mean citizens of the u.s.. Those people forget that there are two large american continents and that one shares mexico and the u.s.) are killed everyday by undocumented immigrants.

It's called Operation: Body Count. No, i'm not joking. There will be an event in Phoenix and other cities on November 25.

Operation Body Count is a national event with the same presentation in different locations across the country that will highlight the 25 American lives lost each day due to illegal immigration, in a very somber and dignified manner. This will not be a protest or demonstration, but rather a public presentation of the FIRE Coalition in cooperation with Mothers Against Illegal Aliens and other coalition member organizations.

On the left side menu on firecoalition.com is the statistic: "25 people in America are killed each day by illegal aliens" with no citation of their sources (whereas a few of the other statistics do cite sources). So i wondered where that came from and did a google search. What i found was this:

On the October 26 broadcast of The Peter Boyles Show, Americans for Legal Immigration president William Gheen revised a dubious statistic frequently cited by Boyles's guests, saying that "between 12 and 25" Americans are killed each day by illegal immigrants. Gheen also acknowledged that "no one really knows how many Americans per day are being killed by aliens and illegal aliens."

Previous Boyles guests have cited statements by Rep. Steve King (R-IA) in claiming that 25 Americans are killed each day by illegal immigrants, and Boyles has falsely claimed that this figure is "a GOA [sic] number," referring to the U.S. Government Accountability Office [GAO]. But rather than asserting that the GAO reported this figure, King claimed in May to have "extrapolate[d]" it from a GAO study he requested that, he said, showed that 28 percent of inmates in federal, state, and local prisons and jails are "criminal aliens."

There is no GAO study reporting that 25 Americans per day are killed by illegal immigrants. Moreover, Colorado Media Matters has reviewed GAO reports addressed to King as well as figures released by the Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) and has found no support for his assertion that 28 percent of inmates in all prisons and jails are criminal aliens. (Source).

This statistic is on a number of websites and no doubt used on other radio shows, but yet no one cites their sources except sometimes to King's extrapolation.

I wonder if people used to make up statistics about how many black people killed white people. I would bet so. Let's say these statistics are somewhat accurate. Obviously the point is to strike fear into people to mobilize them against a group of people who in general are not killers. But does that matter? Not when you don't see people as human.