WFAA-TV

Jesse Diaz

DALLAS - After a federal study revealed that a look at 100 illegal immigrants previously arrested and released for breaking state or local law had on an average been arrested six times, the president of the Dallas chapter of the League of United Latin Amercian Citizens (LULAC) made a controversial remark that has been the talk of the town.

Jesse Diaz, the LULAC leader, said while the report is flawed, he stands by his comments that if Americans want to blame anybody, they need to blame themselves.

"Now that they come to the United States, they're picking up those bad habits of shooting [and] drinking drugs," he said.

Diaz made the statement first on KRLD 1080 talk radio, where the phone lines lit-up as well as the shows' hosts and listeners.

"I heard that comment he made yesterday," said one listener who called into the statement. "My mouth just flew open. I was like, okay."

"If you have to break the laws to get here initially, what respect are you going to have for our laws," said DJ Jay McFarland.

But Diaz said he won't back down. From his Pleasant Grove real estate office, he said he sees a deteriortion of Mexico's conservative Catholic values in everything from sagging pants to teen pregnancies to broken homes.

"I can't believe it, because as you know, most Hispanics stay together forever," he said.

But what Diaz said worries him the most is that the study only looked at 100 who broke criminal laws, but cast a cloud over the millions whose only crime is crossing the border illegally

"It teaches them to hate immigrants, and the majority of these immigrants are good people," he said.

The Department of Homeland Security agreed the study is flawed, and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) issued a statement noting it was neither statistically significant or objective.

However, ICE does stand by the statistic that shows they have deported more than 355,000 criminal aliens since 2003.