Horowitz: The massive invasion and human rights violations ... at our own border harming our communities

We have the wealthiest, most sophisticated and brutal cartels at our border who surveil our side of the border with cutting-edge technology and bring over millions of impoverished aliens, thousands of dangerous criminals and gang members, and drugs killing over 100,000 Americans a year. Perhaps if we renamed Texas or Arizona “Ukraine,” we’d get Republicans to finally care about the issue.

It’s not that Putin hasn’t violated human rights and invaded a sovereign nation. It’s that the testosterone levels of GOP politicians go from 0 to 100 instantaneously when discussing the sovereignty of every nation but our own. Our government continues to refuse to release this year’s ICE immigration enforcement report, but the preliminary numbers paint a shocking picture.

We are on pace for roughly 700,000 illegal aliens to be released into our country in one year. Moreover, this open invitation has allowed the cartels to strategically distract our agents with babysitting while smuggling in thousands of people who are even more problematic. Consider the magnitude of Biden’s invitation to invade America. Look at the percentage increase in Border Patrol apprehensions of categories of criminals since Biden took office:

Notice the jump in apprehensions of convicted murderers and sex offenders. Now consider the fact that those people pay the cartels a significant sum of money to be strategically and surreptitiously crossed. Given their successful business model, it’s hard to imagine CBP apprehending more than a tiny fraction of these dangerous criminals. Every boatload of fake refugees our agents are forced to deal with is a strategic ploy for the cartels to cross over dangerous individuals. That is an invasion.

We will never know the full scope of the number of dangerous criminals who enter our country, but we can begin to quantify how much it affects our safety by looking back during the Trump administration when they were still apprehending them inside our country. If you go back to FY 2018, ICE apprehended criminal aliens who together racked up 542,798 criminal convictions and arrests. The numbers include 2,028 homicide offenses, 5,562 robberies, 11,766 weapons offenses, 50,753 assault charges, 76,585 dangerous drug charges, 80,730 DUIs, and over 12,000 sexual offenses.

Just ponder for a moment the immeasurable carnage caused by our senseless disregard for sovereignty and the number of nameless victims the media will never spotlight. This data doesn’t include those criminal charge categories that had fewer than 1,000. Only 29% of those were unconvicted charges, which likely means that the main focus of ICE removal operations, understandably so, is on convictions because they focus on the prisons and jails. Which means there are likely many more arrested for crimes who are not apprehended by ICE.

Also, keep in mind that ICE only has fewer than 6,000 deportation officers, a fraction of the size of the NYPD, and the largest number of illegal aliens live in sanctuary cities, which made it difficult for ICE to catch the largest number of criminal aliens.

As of the most recent ICE report, there were 3.26 million aliens under ICE's undetained docket. These are individuals who have been targeted by ICE for removal, which most likely means the overwhelming majority have criminal records in addition to immigration violations. That means over 3 million criminal aliens who were dangerous enough to be on ICE's radar remain in the country indefinitely without being deported.

As of 2018, there were more than 1 million illegal aliens who have already received final deportation orders, with another 1.5 million having already received deportation orders but who are in the process of seeking an appeal.

Even if we focused solely on the bad guys, we lack the resources to make a dent. As early as 2013, DHS estimated, based on ICE programs in local jails, that there were 1.9 million criminal aliens in this country and that 900,000 aliens were arrested every year. Chillingly, the report noted that "550,000 criminal aliens convicted of crimes exit law enforcement custody every year" and that "this population of criminal aliens poses a major threat to public safety."

Now consider the fact that this is all old data and preceded the worst border invasion in our history. Just since fiscal year 2018, we’ve apprehended 3.7 million at the border, of whom undoubtedly most were released and many more never recorded got away from agents. While we often complain that all illegal crime is avoidable and that not enough criminals are deported, we have still deported from the interior and at the border 1.8 million criminal aliens from 2007 to 2018. Can you imagine how many of them likely took advantage of the invasion of the past few years, paid the cartels enormous sums of money, re-entered our country and communities, and enriched these vicious cartels at the same time so they can more effectively control, surveil, and manipulate both sides of our border?

Nobody has ever endeavored to fully quantify the magnitude of crime, chaos, fiscal cost, and drugs and gangs in our cities as a result of this. It is astounding that we don’t try to ascertain the citizenship of every individual arrested, but back when ICE was still doing good work, they divulged some numbers in New York City from among those they lodged detainers against. In FY 2019, ICE’s New York bureau field office lodged 7,526 detainers for foreign criminals who racked up 17,873 criminal convictions and 6,500 criminal charges. The offenses included among those crimes were 200 homicides, over 500 robberies, over 1,000 sexual offenses, over 1,000 weapons offenses, over 3,500 assaults, and over 1,500 DUIs.

At the time, I noted the 200 homicides are astounding because there were only about 300 murders per year at the time. Not all of those homicides were committed in one year, but for ICE to have definitively identified aliens with 200 murder convictions or charges in just one year’s worth of detainers is simply astonishing.

Which brings us back to the border and the broader lack of prioritization of geopolitical threats by our political class. In January, Todd Bensman reported live from the Mexico-Guatemala border that the U.N. was handing out cash assistance to encourage migrants to invade our border. It’s this invasion that is facilitating unconscionable amounts of crime, drugs, sex trafficking, and gang and cartel activity at our border and in every major American city. Ranchers on our own soil live and work in constant fear. It’s hard to conjure up a greater, more comprehensive systemic threat to our sovereignty, security, culture, and human rights than the policies facilitating the border invasion.

While the media whips everyone into a frenzy over a foreign country over which we have little control and few options, they will never tell what is occurring at our own border. For GOP politicians to only care about what the media tells them to while ignoring the plight of our own people is a violation of their oaths of office.