How Much Crime and Chaos Will It Take for Biden to ‘Address This Disaster’ at the Border?

Laken Riley was a 22-year-old nursing student at the University of Georgia. She was known as a person who was caring, driven, and the definition of a “true friend.” But when Riley went on a jog Thursday morning, she faced a brutal, untimely death.

Jose Antonio Ibarra, an illegal immigrant, has been accused of murdering the young student after “disfiguring” her skull. As Fox News reported, Ibarra “is charged with the felonies of malice murder, murder, kidnapping, false imprisonment, aggravated assault, aggravated battery and concealing the death of another, as well as the misdemeanor of physically hindering a 911 call.”

In its story covering the incident Monday, CNN claimed “there is little evidence indicating a connection between immigration and crime,” but a variety of experts and statistics definitively say otherwise.

On Monday’s episode of “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins,” Todd Bensman, senior national security fellow for the Center for Immigration Studies, said, “[W]e do need to keep in mind … that the mass migration crisis at the southern border is the ultimate stranger danger.”

He continued, “[It’s] virtually impossible to verify criminal histories of even a tiny fraction of all of the millions of people that have crossed in over that border” — a number that has skyrocketed since the Biden administration has been in office. And yet, Biden and his team have repeatedly denied that the 10 million of illegal immigrants who’ve flooded into the U.S. since his inauguration is a crisis. But Family Research Council President Tony Perkins wondered: Could Riley’s murder “finally spur this administration to address this disaster of their own making?”

Bensman and Perkins discussed the shift from immigrants who came to America mostly from Mexico and Central America to now “it’s the entire world coming across the southern border,” Perkins said. Bensman noted that we now “have the greatest percentages in American history coming over that border from 170 countries other than Mexico and Central America.”

He added that there are more Chinese than Mexicans coming into the country, with at least 45,000 in the last 36 months. There are “350 people from Muslim majority countries who are on the FBI’s terrorism watch list. … People coming from every nation on the continent of Africa, including places where there are tribal conflicts with atrocities and warlords,” he explained. “… [W]ho knows who’s coming over that border? They just say, ‘My name is Mickey Mouse,’ and we let them in.”

While the Left claims there isn’t a connection between illegal immigration and increased crime, Bensman contended that the cities facing the highest amount of migrants, particularly sanctuary cities, are seeing “new kinds of crime” as people come to the states and are unable to provide for themselves.

“Far too many crimes should not have ever happened, because those people should have never been here,” he said. But part of the issue, Bensman emphasized, is that the process for these illegal immigrants entering the country is too simple. Not only can they enter the U.S. far too easily, but once they’re in, they’re supposed to “voluntarily report into an [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] office later,” which he emphasized “statistics and data” reveal “the vast majority of them never report in.”

Ultimately, he added, “When somebody is arrested for a criminal act, we are supposed to call ICE. But in the sanctuary cities, they don’t call ICE. They have a ban on calling ICE. There’s nothing more immoral [to them] than calling ICE on a criminal arrested in any of these cities.” But then, as a consequence to this way of thinking, the result is a seemingly endless cycle of crime.

Perkins asked, “What benefits are illegal immigrants getting when they come into the country?” Bensman replied, “Everything.”

He elaborated that when someone comes into this country illegally, in many cases, they get “100% support” in terms of housing, food, transportation, school, clothing, and medical care. “For example,” he said, “in Chicago, each immigrant is getting $7,000 cash a year” and other needs. Additionally, there are several ways they can work “illegally and fraudulently.”

As Representative Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) summarized: “The Biden administration’s open-border policies have fueled crime, undermined public safety and overwhelmed our federal, state and local law enforcement officers. … Illegal entry into our nation is perceived as commonplace, and it is conducted with little fear of consequences. That must change, both for the security of our nation and to help restore the dignity and importance of legal immigration in the eyes of all Americans. This crisis is fixable. President Biden must reverse his misguided policies so Congress can work to resolve our broken immigration system.”