During the Democrat response to President Trump’s Oval Office address, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) accused the president of “manufacturing a crisis” at the United States-Mexico border.
In a fact check by Breitbart News, Pelosi’s statement is incorrect. A review of the crime at the southern border, cartel warfare, drug epidemic, deaths from an open border, asylum fraud, and costs to American taxpayers reveal a startling crisis at the border.
Some of that data was cited by Trump in his address, where he noted the American suffering at the hands of illegal aliens nationwide:
In the last two years, [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] officers made 266,000 arrests of aliens with criminal records – including those charged or convicted of 100,000 assaults, 30,000 sex crimes and 4,000 violent killings. Over the years, thousands of Americans have been brutally killed by those who illegally entered our country, and thousands more lives will be lost if we don’t act right now. [Emphasis added]
In the last year alone, ICE agents arrested more than 6,600 convicted murderers and convicted sex offenders who were in the United States illegally.
Of that total, 4,975 of the illegal aliens arrested were convicted sex offenders. The other 1,641 illegal aliens had been convicted of homicide. Another 1,913 illegal aliens that were arrested by ICE had pending sex offense charges against them, while 387 illegal aliens had pending murder charges against them.
For each one of these crimes, there are at least one or more American and legal immigrant victims.
Trump also touched on the country’s vast drug epidemic that has crippled regions of the U.S., the vast majority of which has been the direct result of an open border:
Our southern border is a pipeline for vast quantities of illegal drugs – including meth, heroin, cocaine and fentanyl. Every week, 300 of our citizens are killed by heroin alone – 90 percent of which floods across from our southern border. More Americans will die from drugs this year than were killed in the entire Vietnam War. [Emphasis added]
Indeed, drug overdoses in 2017 killed an unprecedented 72,287 U.S. residents, nearly three times the number of individuals killed by global terrorism. Nearly 50,000 of those deadly overdoses were caused by either heroin or fentanyl.
And it is not just Americans suffering at the hands of an open border. Mexican drug cartels have profited billions from America’s open border through the drug trade and human trafficking, increasing their power in Mexico.
Since 2009, there have been more than 250,000 homicides in Mexico and at least 30,000 disappearances. In 2017, there were 26,573 murders, 1,275 kidnappings, and 5,357 extortion cases in Mexico, marking the bloodiest year in the country in 20 years, despite these figures not capturing the scope of the cartel violence occurring in Mexico.
“The official figures, however, pale in comparison to reality since they do not account for the number of victims ‘disappeared’ by cartel gunmen–including those who were incinerated or buried in clandestine graves,” Breitbart News’ Cartel Chronicles co-founders Brandon Darby and Ildefonso Ortiz wrote in 2017.
At the southern border, there are now about 2,100 illegal border crossings a year with experts projecting illegal immigration in Fiscal Year 2019 to hit the highest level in more than a decade, with 600,000 illegal border crossings expected.
Migrant women suffer the most from the human trafficking at the border, as federal immigration officials say about 1-in-3 are sexually assaulted or raped during their efforts to reach the U.S.
Last year in Texas area ranches, alone, at least 217 migrants were found dead after attempting to illegally cross into the country. Across the entire southern border, nearly 360 migrants died trying to cross illegally, an increase of 12 percent over the year before.
Asylum loopholes in U.S. law have provided major incentives for illegal aliens and child migrants to try to cross the southern border. Of the nearly 400,000 illegal aliens who crossed between Ports of Entry at the border in Fiscal Year 2018, about 55,000 claimed “credible fear” to seek asylum in the U.S., an increase of 43 percent from the year before.
Migrants claiming “credible fear” have an 88 percent chance of evading deportation, creating an overwhelming backlog in immigration courts. Meanwhile, less than 10 percent of “credible fear” migrants arriving at the border actually have legitimate asylum cases.
The soaring illegal immigration crisis, of course, all comes at a massive cost to American taxpayers and U.S. workers. Every year, illegal aliens cost taxpayers at least $116 billion as the illegal population grows to anywhere between 11 to 22 million illegal aliens.
For American workers, the fiscal burn of uncontrolled immigration has translated to stagnant and decreased wages. Research finds that every one percent increase in the immigrant composition of each U.S. occupation’s labor force reduces those Americans’ hourly wages by 0.4 percent. Every one percent increase in the immigrant workforce reduces Americans’ overall wages by almost one percent.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
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