Branding illegal Mexicans as " criminals" simply because they lack the proper documentation, casting them wholesale in same category as rapists murders and thieves, is rank xenophobia.The reason most of those people come into this country illegally is that they are too poor to pay corrupt Mexican bureaucrats the money they extort for granting the required legal documents. Some of the illegals, admittedly, turn out to be real criminals, but the vast majority, the women and children especially, are merely poor folk seeking a better life.
Consider, further, that your broad definition of criminal would include just about everyone in this country—-folks who drive 10 miles an hour over the speed limit, make illegal u-turns late at night when the cops aren't watching, hedge a bit on their income taxes, smoke Cuban cigars. Are they really criminals? And how about our national heroes, icons like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King and, for that matter, all of our Founding Fathers? Didn't they break the law? Were they criminals, too?