“I say, I told you so.”
That was former President Donald Trump’s reaction at a Michigan rally on Sept. 27 of tens of thousands of violent, convicted criminals being let into the U.S. by the Biden-Harris Department of Homeland Security, according to the latest data from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) released on Sept. 25 via Congressional oversight by U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas).
The numbers were breathtaking: 13,376 convicted murderers, 16,120 convicted of sexual assault, 64,579 convicted of assault, 43,546 convicted of burglary, larceny or robbery, 13,876 convicted of weapons offenses, 2,606 convicted of kidnapping and 2,218 convicted of commercialized sexual offenses — all before they ever came to America and were released into the country by the federal government.
According to the House Homeland Security Committee release on Sept. 27, “they had previously been encountered by CBP, turned over to ICE, had their criminal history documented, and then were released into the United States.”
The vast majority of these convicted criminals — 151,851 out of 156,521, or 97 percent — were not currently detained by ICE, with only 4,670 are detention and subject to removal. Of the convicted murderers, the numbers are even worse: only 277 are in detention, or just 2.2 percent. The rest are apparently just roaming around. But now Harris is promising that when she is in office — apparently heedless that she has already been in office for almost four years — to complete her border visit checkbox photo opportunity, posted on X on Sept. 29, “As president, I will secure our border, disrupt the flow of fentanyl coming into the United States, and work to fix our broken system of immigration.”
But one of the things “broken” is the Biden-Harris administration’s propensity to release convicted criminals into the U.S., simply out of incompetence or worse, on purpose. The other thing “broken” is public perception that the current Democratic administration even gives a whit about the problem, with Harris upside down on immigration versus Trump, for example, in the latest national Quinnipiac poll taken Sept. 19 to Sept. 22, with 53 percent of likely voters saying Trump would do a better job handling immigration and 45 percent saying Harris. That’s consistent across almost all national polls taken the entire election cycle. If the election comes down to immigration, the border and illegal alien criminals, it might not be close.
Trump found it curious that the numbers were released at all — the letter from ICE as Vice President Kamala Harris made her visit to the U.S. southern border since 2021, stating, “So, these numbers just came out — nobody’s ever seen these numbers for years, nobody’s ever seen them — and probably some patriot in ICE or somebody just did something, they just said the country is going bad, you can’t have a country like that. We have think of it murderers — convicted murderers — imprisoned for life, many get the electric chair or they get whatever their form of death penalty. These are convicted people for life are… now in our country and I can finally look at them and see.”
Here, Trump is reminding voters of his warning in his very first speech as a candidate when he began running for president in June 2015, when he famously stated, “The U.S. has become a dumping ground for everybody else’s problems. Thank you. It’s true, and these are the best and the finest. When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
Turns out, Trump was right, yet again. Allowing unrestricted illegal immigration — since Feb. 2021, there have been 8.3 million encounters by the U.S. Border Patrol on the southwest border, the most in recorded U.S. history — will allow a certain percentage of proven criminals, including violent criminals, into the U.S. So, 156,521 out of 8.3 million, that’s a 1.87 percent violent crime rate, almost 2 out of every 100 let into the country, are convicted, violent criminals. Compare that to the national violent crime rate, which includes murder, manslaughter, rape and robbery, of 0.36 percent, or 363.8 out of every 100,000 — that’s five times the national violent crime rate.
Perhaps Kamala Harris does not need to visit the southern border to find out why this is happening, but by visiting the Oval Office, the Department of Homeland Security and by looking in the mirror.
Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government.
