Acting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Patrick Lechleitner revealed in a letter to Congress last week that 425,431 migrants with criminal convictions — which include charges such as rape, murder, assault, and drug possession — have been released into American communities. Lechleitner also noted that another 222,141 migrants who were allowed into the United States currently face criminal charges in U.S. courts. None of these individuals are currently in ICE custody.
This means 647,572 convicted and accused criminal aliens are currently free in the United States. For those who argue that the 222,141 individuals facing criminal charges are innocent until proven guilty, you’re correct. However, upwards of 98% of criminal cases in U.S. courts result in a guilty plea or conviction. Based on these statistics, roughly 217,000 of the 222,141 individuals facing charges are likely to be convicted.
Team Biden is more committed to ‘helping’ foreigners than it is in protecting American citizens from threats to their safety and national security.
To put these numbers in perspective, Boston has a population of 675,647, and Washington, D.C., has 689,545 residents. Cities like Rochester, New York; Richmond, Virginia; and Spokane, Washington all have populations between 200,000 and 225,000. Thanks to the Biden administration’s refusal to exclude ineligible foreign nationals, we now have enough criminal aliens to fill a medium-sized U.S. city.
You might be asking yourself, “How could the federal government miss nearly 700,000 convicted and potential alien criminals?” The simple answer is by willfully ignoring the immigration laws of the United States.
The Biden administration doesn’t like the Immigration and Nationality Act, the law that dictates when and how foreigners can enter the United States and how long they can stay. Under our system, if an administration doesn’t agree with a particular law, it lobbies Congress to draft and vote on a new bill. But that hasn’t happened with immigration. Even though Americans have repeatedly expressed their desire for secure borders and safe communities, that doesn’t align with the Biden administration’s worldview.
For more than three years, the Biden administration has assured Americans that everything is OK at the southern border, all while turning the Department of Homeland Security into a concierge and taxi service for border crossers. The administration has been unapologetically allowing criminals, terrorists, and Lord knows who else to enter the country, all while smiling and telling the public, “Don’t worry, you’re safe! All those military-aged men crossing the border just want asylum and the American dream. And besides, we’re carefully vetting them all.”
Of course, Lechleitner’s letter shows that little to no vetting has taken place. That’s not surprising. Anyone with experience in immigration enforcement will tell you it’s impossible to thoroughly vet that many people so quickly. In fact, anyone with common sense should be able to tell you that. But when it comes to border security and immigration policy, common sense has been in short supply lately.
To the extent that the corporate media covers this story at all, it will engage in theatrical handwringing and attempt to blame everything from xenophobia to capitalism. But this issue stems directly from the choice to ignore binding laws duly enacted by Congress. This means the problem never had to exist in the first place. The Immigration and Nationality Act grants the president more than enough authority to restore order at the border, if only Joe Biden would use it.
Doing so would ensure that asylum is reserved for people genuinely persecuted by their home governments. Right now, the Biden administration is making a mockery of America’s legitimate responsibilities under international humanitarian law. We’re not helping people who are actually facing persecution, because a rogue chief executive has unlawfully turned asylum into a “get across the border free” pass.
Anyone who prefers to be in the United States rather than their own country is taking advantage of our corrupted asylum system. Meanwhile, U.S. citizens are paying the price, both in blood and treasure, for uninvited guests — many of whom have repaid our kindness with violent, criminal behavior.
But Team Biden is more committed to “helping” foreigners than it is in protecting American citizens from threats to their safety and national security. Therefore, we should all be asking ourselves how many more Kate Steinles, Laken Rileys, and Rachel Morins it is going to take before the White House and Congress put their heads together and do something to stop this insanity?