Hours before Texas Gov. Rick Perry announced he would send National Guard troops to the border, Texas state Senator Dan Patrick said there are at least 100,000 illegal immigrant gang members in the state.
On Monday’s The Laura Ingraham Show, Patrick, who is also the Republican candidate for lieutenant governor, said from 2008 to 2012, 143,000 illegal immigrant criminals were arrested and jailed in Texas. He said these were “hardened criminals, gang members, and other criminals that we identified as being in Texas illegally.”
“We charged them with 447,000 crimes, a half-million crimes in four years, just in Texas, including over 5,000 rapes and 2,000 murders,” Patrick said. “We estimate we have 100,000 gang members here illegally.”
Patrick also observed during his trips to the border and detention centers that many of the “young children” are teenagers and with parents and family members. He said there is a concern that some are “gang members” and that potential terrorists can exploit the porous border.
In addition to the public safety threat, Patrick also discussed the strain on local schools and other public resources and accused the Obama administration of luring more illegal immigrants to the country after unilaterally enacting the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. He also accused the Obama administration of “sweeping human beings under the rug” by putting illegal immigrants on buses to cities across America and releasing children to adults who may not be their family members. Patrick also said Border Patrol agents have found “hundreds and hundreds of dead bodies on our side of the border” as more migrants try to trek to the United States hoping to get amnesty from Obama.
Noting that 60,000 illegal immigrant children have been apprehended since October of last year, Patrick said that law enforcement officials told him that somewhere between one in five and one in 10 illegal immigrants are actually caught, which means there could be at least five times as many illegal immigrants who have snuck into the state.
“You do the math,” Patrick said.