It’s the reality on the ground

Having failed to do anything of substance during his tenure to stop seven million migrants from entering the country illegally, President Joe Biden and his supporters are now trying to spin away growing voter alarm about the border crisis as a product of incendiary rhetoric by Donald Trump and Republicans.

It’s not the rhetoric that’s fueling the fear that those illegal crossers present a danger to the security of the nation and the safety of Americans. It’s the reality.

Roughly 5,500 illegal entries are recorded every day at the southern border. Over the past four months, the total number of unscreened entrants to the U.S. nearly matches the population of the city of Detroit.

No other country in the world allows such disregard and disrespect for its borders.

Last year, border agents seized 26,700 pounds of deadly fentanyl at the border, a nearly five-fold increase over 2020. Fentanyl overdoses took the lives of 112,000 Americans in 2023. Drug trafficking is one reason the Mexican cartels are so involved in moving migrants into the United States.

Apologists for illegal immigration note the undocumented commit crimes at a lower rate than native-born U.S. residents. That’s irrelevant. We’re stuck with the criminals we’ve bred ourselves. We shouldn’t tolerate any level of crime from those who have no right to be here.

Custom and Border Patrol agents arrested 35,433 undocumented immigrants with criminal convictions last year, including 598 known gang members. Since the beginning of fiscal year 2021, 294 individuals on the terrorist watchlist have been apprehended at the southwest border.

Donald Trump may be crude in his description of migrants. But his rhetoric on the threat the surge presents matches the reality on the border.