It’s hard to find an exact figure on the number of migrants who have crossed the U.S. border illegally during President Joe Biden’s administration, but the estimates fall somewhere between 12 and 18 million, according to The Family Research Council.
There have been 10.6 million encounters with Border Patrol officers since October of 2020, Newsweek reported this week.
It’s impossible to account for the “gotaways,” the crossers who had no encounter with U.S. authorities.
Unfortunately, it’s becoming easier to detect the presence of crimes committed by illegals.
According to The Heritage Foundation, in 2023 alone, Border Patrol agents encountered thousands of illegals crossing the border who brought with them prior criminal convictions for assault, rape and murder.
A 2021 Department of Justice report showed that 64% of federal arrests in 2018 involved noncitizens, though they comprised only 7% of the population at the time.
Former President Donald Trump has said repeatedly that he’ll remove illegals from the U.S.
The Scripps/Ipsos Poll found that 54% of all respondents support the idea of mass deportations. Eighty-six percent of Republicans and 58% of Independents favor deportations. Democrats signing on to the idea numbered 25%.
It’s not a subjected openly endorsed by most congressmen and women, but some are warming up to the idea.
“These people have to be removed from this country,” Rep. Josh Brecheen (R-Oklahoma) said on Washington Watch Wednesday.
Brecheen told show host Tony Perkins he is in the early stages of working with his staff on his vision for what deportation would look like.
“I've told my team members, they'd actually worked with Heritage on some concepts, and we are trying to lean in on deportation and the characteristics, number one, of how do you pay for that?” he said.
Mother testifies of daughter’s brutal death
The mother of Rachel Morin, herself a mother of five who was allegedly murdered by an illegal immigrant in Maryland, tested on Capitol Hill Wednesday.
"An illegal immigrant that was a gotaway from El Salvador had waited for her on the trail. I was told that they grabbed her, dragged her through the woods, raped her, strangled her, murdered her. We were told that her body was blanketed in bruises. And I can tell you from looking at her when I went to the funeral home that it was probably the most graphic thing that I've ever seen," Patty Morin testified.
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Mississippi) praised Biden’s executive order in June that has lowered the number of border encounters. He also criticized House Republicans for failing to pass a bill that they say would have codified higher numbers at the border.
Most who are not Democrats like Thompson see Biden’s executive order as too little, too late.
It surely didn’t come in time for Rachel Morin or for nursing student Laken Riley, who was killed while jogging on the University of Georgia campus in February.
Arrested and charged was Jose Antonio Ibarra, 26, a Venezuelan national who entered illegally into El Paso in 2022.
Those were the stories that generated some of the most media coverage.
In the case of Morin, “there were warning signs with this individual. It was just the lack of vetting that takes place, and then even once some vetting occurs, and these people have broken laws, they’re allowed to remain in this country unless it's major infractions,” Brecheen said.
The cost of deportation is the hurdle Brecheen and his staff are still trying to clear.
“We’ve got a country that our government can’t afford. We have to send a signal to people that you can’t come into this country, break the laws and expect to be first in line. Trump is talking about (deportation), and we’ve got to figure out the logistics of it.”
But, he says, the conversation is well worth the effort.
Growing atmosphere of lawlessness
Eventually, if there’s no accountability, there will be no distinction between crime committed by illegals and crime committed by homegrown citizens.
When there is crime without consequences “it creates the atmosphere where lawlessness is compounded. We’ve got to make sure the rule of law is upheld in the United States, or we’re asking for lawbreaking to the nth power to continue,” Brecheen said.
