Las Vegas Criminal Defense Blog

Nevada Governor Jim Gibbons announced Friday that he will be creating a Nevada Crime Commission, which will examine state crime problems and suggest creative ways to fight them. Gibbons explained, “One of the primary purposes of government is to protect citizens from criminals. I plan to create the Nevada Crime Commission to explore new ways to reduce crime in Nevada and find real solutions to ‘current day’ crime problems.”

In its effort to understand and fight crime trends in Nevada, the commission will be able to create its own task forces and seek funding and grants. Some of the specific crime areas the Nevada Crime Commission will target include mortgage fraud, Medicare/Medicaid fraud, internet crime, gang crimes, prescription drug abuse, and immigration crimes in Nevada.

The Nevada Crime Commission will be made up of law enforcement officers, prosecutors, various business and community leaders, activists, and representatives of various crime victims groups. It will also include appropriate federal agencies; for instance, members from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services will be invited to participate to help combat immigration crimes in Nevada.

Attorneys practicing the criminal defense of aliens in Nevada may have some new clients: Earlier this month U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) orchestrated a three-day gang enforcement operation in Las Vegas and Mesquite, resulting in the arrest of twenty-nine gang members and gang associates from Mexico, El Salvador, Afghanistan, and the Bahamas. Some of them are charged with re-entry after having been deported while others are foreign nationals being processed for removal, and most of them have serious criminal histories.

This latest round of arrests was part of Operation Community Shield, where ICE’s National Gang Unit joins forces with other law enforcement agencies to capture dangerous trans-national gangs. For this operation, ICE recruited the help of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, the Mesquite Police Department, the Nevada Department of Public Safety’s Division of Parole and Probation and Division of Immigrants.

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