Kerby Anderson
The number one issue for voters this year is immigration. To be precise, the real issue is the lack of border security.
This is not only perception but reality. Perhaps you have seen the chart that compares the illegal immigrant encounters for Presidents Obama, Trump, and Biden. The blue bar for the second term of Barack Obama lists 5 million encounters. The green bar for Donald Trump lists 4.7 million encounters. And the red bar for Joe Biden lists 8.4 million so far, with an estimate of 12 million by the end of his term.
If every person encountered at the border and let into the country was a law-abiding migrant, the sheer numbers pose a problem. Just ask the mayors of many of the large cities in America. Unfortunately, not every person crossing the border is someone we would want to live in this country.
Each year Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests nearly 2,000 illegal aliens who have murdered Americans. Last year, ICE caught 1,323 illegals with homicide convictions along with 390 with pending homicide convictions. That works out to nearly five murders a day.
Of course, these are the ones who were caught. Millions have crossed the border and ICE estimates that there were at least 1.7 million “gotaways” who escaped federal custody. We can assume some of them are involved in drugs and human trafficking. A few might even be terrorists, who deliberately avoided capture.
As I mentioned in a previous commentary, we also have nearly 75,000 “special interest aliens.” These are individuals who have traveled to countries known for terrorist activity and should be given further scrutiny.
Americans are convinced that border security is a problem. These numbers illustrate that the problem is even worse than you know.