Unintended consequences?
Distrust deepens over border chaos
Laken Riley, the Georgia college student who was murdered Feb. 22, keeps the attention on border issues. A Venezuelan immigrant in the U.S. illegally has been charged with muliple crimes connected to her death. Laken Riley/Facebook
The top election 2024 issue–immigration–continues to spiral out of control. While eyes remain focused on Texas, events create more border chaos.
In recent weeks, attention has focused on illegal immigrants who commit violent crimes and the feds covered up where they transported illegal immigrants to 43 cities.
Augusta University student Laken Riley was murdered in Georgia February 22. Jose Antonio Ibarra, a Venezuelan national in the United States illegally, is charged with the crime.
On the morning of Feb. 22, Laken Riley, a 22-year old Augusta School of Nursing student, went out for a morning jog. By early afternoon, a friend contacted campus security stating she never returned. Near the intramural field, Riley was abducted and her body was found near Lake Herrick.
Riley died of blunt force trauma that disfigured her skull. On Feb. 23, Ibarra was arrested and faces charges of concealing the death of another, false imprisonment, felony murder, malice murder, kidnapping, aggravated assault, and aggravated battery in connection to her death.
Woodstock City Church lead pastor Samer Massad, Riley’s pastor, said the following:
‘Laken was special. She was a gift to anyone who knew her,’ Massad told the mourners gathering, as reported by 11 Alive.
‘She had a gift for making anyone she was around feel comfortable and seen,’ the pastor added. ‘But the most special thing about Laken was her faith in Jesus. She didn’t just believe it, she lived it. And because of her faith, as hard as days like today are, we grieve her loss and celebrate her life with the hope that she is now in the presence of Jesus, her Savior. We will miss her dearly.’
Riley’s father, Jason, made an appeal to the Georgia Senate Wednesday to deal with illegal immigration by calling it an invasion. Her murder is a flash point for Americans who believe she would be alive if it had not been for reckless Biden administration immigration policy. Ibarra was arrested in Queen, N.Y. for endangering a child. The New York Post reported NYC authorities previously reported Ibarra “was released before immigration officials could file a request to ask local cops to hold him in custody.”
It did not help the administration that President Joe Biden mispronounced Riley’s first name “Lincoln” in the recent State of the Union speech.
However, the Washington D.C.-based Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) has compiled extensive data revealing illegal immigration crime information. The data comes from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) public releases and Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests identifying the first years of the Trump and Biden administrations. CIS reported the following from this data:
68 percent decrease in at-large arrests of criminal aliens.
44 percent decrease in detainer requests issued on criminal aliens.
67 percent decrease in deportations of criminal aliens.
55 percent decrease in immigration-related criminal convictions.
The combined number of crimes on the rap sheets of aliens arrested by ICE during these years has dropped by 56 percent under the Biden administration. Comparing these two time periods shows a decline in every crime category reported by ICE, including, for example:
63 percent decrease in larceny records.
57 percent decrease in stolen vehicle records.
55 percent decrease in burglary records.
48 percent decrease in assault records.
47 percent decrease in robbery records.
34 percent decrease in kidnapping records.
Alejandro Mayorkas, Department of Homeland Security secretary, identified the administration’s motives in a September 2021 memo, "By exercising our discretionary authority in a targeted way, we can focus our efforts on those who pose a threat to national security, public safety, and border security and thus threaten America's well-being."
Mayorkas has paid lip service to national public safety threats when the data demonstrates the polar opposite of their grandiose intentions. It’s just one of the reasons the U.S. House of Representatives impeached him on February 13.
And two Biden press secretaries insist the “border is secure.”
The Biden administration has flown 320,000 illegal immigrants into 43 American cities that the administration refuses to identify. An effort to get this struck from the just-approved government spending plan was killed by 51 U.S. Senate Democrats.
Meanwhile, Americans learned last fall the Biden administration flew 320,000 illegal immigrants to 43 American cities. The Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) latched onto a “general exception” to keep those cities secret to prevent “vulnerabilities,” if revealed publicly.
The CIS submitted the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to expose the flights. It sued the CBP to get access to the cities. The CIS revealed the CBP’s reasoning:
Exception (b)(7)(E) has been applied to the identifying information for airports of entry, which, if disclosed would reveal information about the relative number of individuals arriving, and thus resources expended at particular airports which would, either standing alone or combined with other information, reveal operational vulnerabilities that could be exploited by bad actors altering their patterns of conduct, adopting new methods of operation, and taking other countermeasures, thereby undermining CBP’s law enforcement efforts to secure the United States borders.
In the federal budget debate Friday evening, U.S. Sen. Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn., sought to amend the funding plan to eliminate funding for these flights. All Democrats rejected it.
It’s more of the same from the feds who lack honesty and transparency with the American people. In light of Riley’s murder, and other violent crimes committed by illegals, honesty is the least Americans deserve.
Between these accounts and the standoff in Texas, Team Biden shouldn’t wonder why the southern border is the top election issue for Americans. They created it and they’ve allowed it to persist.