The Deportation Debate

“We start with the criminal migrants,” J.D. Vance said in response to a question during the recent vice-presidential debate. “About a million of those people have committed some form of crime in addition to crossing the border illegally, I think you start with deportations on those folks.”

If Donald Trump and J.D. Vance win the election this November, I can’t think of a more contentious issue for our country than deportations.  

I don’t have the eloquence of the Republican vice-presidential candidate. But I did work in federal intelligence and law enforcement for over 26 years. So, I would like to add some context to Vance’s reply.  

Approximately 20 million illegal immigrants have come across our open borders since the inauguration of Joe Biden. According to information released by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), “as of July 2024 ICE let 435,719 convicted criminals and 226,847 people with pending criminal charges in their home countries into the United States.”

Some of these are violent and heinous crimes; they include 13,099 illegal migrants that have convictions for homicide, plus an additional 1,845 who were facing criminal charges. ICE admitted 9,461 with “convictions for sex offenses (not including assault or commercialized sex), and 2,659 face pending charges. The convictions include crimes such as assault (62,231), robbery (10,031), sexual assault (15,811), weapons offenses (13,423), and dangerous drugs (56,533).”

The actual numbers are far worse. For example, the above numbers reflect what was reported from foreign governments. The migrants are coming from over 160 different countries. Do we really believe communist China, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, to name just a few, are going to report criminal histories of their populace? In addition, statistics do not reflect the criminal acts committed by illegal immigrants while in the United States (see below), nor do they reflect the horrific acts of violence, sexual assaults, and other crimes while migrants are trafficked through other countries into the United States. 

Extrapolating from the above and factoring in other concerning issues we will discuss below, it is reasonable to assume about 10 percent of illegal immigrants are disposed to serious crime or should be considered national security risks. There are also many other nonviolent categories of crime, such as illegals being put to work on unlicensed marijuana farms, laundering illicit money, prostitution, participating in a wide array of frauds and scams, extortion, using fake identification, driving while intoxicated, etc. And, by definition, every illegal immigrant breaks U.S. immigration laws. 

The following are just a few examples of crimes of concern.

Copying a page out of Fidel Castro’s playbook during the 1980 Mariel boatlift—when the Cuban dictator played Jimmy Carter for a fool by releasing criminals, high-risk patients, and the mentally ill to our shores—the despotic regime of Venezuelan Nicolás Maduro released its violent prisoners and facilitated their passage to the United States. Over the last few years, violent crime statistics in Venezuela have fallen dramatically. Criminal gangs like the Tren de Aragua, Yeico Masacre, and the Meleán joined the Venezuelan diasporas and settled in the United States. 

With the arrival of the Venezuelan gangs, warfare on the streets of Chicago and other U.S. urban centers has turned more deadly. Expect additional innocents to suffer as turf battles over drug markets and other criminal activity intensify. Felonies are up 35 percent in New York City since 2019, and an estimated 75 percent of arrests in midtown Manhattan for assault and other crimes are illegal migrants.

There have been high-profile murders of innocent Americans such as Laken Riley. She was a 22-year-old nursing student out on her morning run at the University of Georgia. She was allegedly assaulted and murdered by a Venezuelan who entered the United States illegally and was allowed to stay. There are hundreds of other cases that get little notoriety. They should. Each represents suffering and loss that did not have to happen.  

Particularly heartbreaking are assaults against children. Jocelyn Nungaray, age 12, was brutally assaulted and murdered under a bridge by illegal immigrants in Houston, Texas. Jocelyn was found dumped in a creek bed; she was bound with rope and nude from the waist down.  

Child migrants themselves are victims of crime. Border Patrol agents report that kids as young as 8 are being drugged and smuggled into the United States. Human traffickers who pose as parents or family members work the system to gain entry. Children are “recycled” in the scams. The Department of Homeland Security released a report that the Biden-Harris administration has lost track of approximately 300,000 migrant children.

Children are used as drug and money couriers. Children are abused and sex trafficked. Some find themselves in the underground labor market. As reported by The New York Times, “migrant children, who have been coming into the United States without their parents in record numbers, are ending up in some of the most punishing jobs in the country.” Some have been maimed or killed on the job.  

In 2023, approximately 110,000 Americans died of drug overdose; about 75,000 deaths resulted from an overdose of synthetic opioids—particularly fentanyl. Statistics are sterile. Each individual death is a tragic story. The fentanyl precursors originate in China and then the fentanyl and fentanyl-laced products, including candies that target children, are manufactured in Mexico and smuggled across our porous border.  

The Mexican drug cartels that traffic in drugs also control the routes used by illegal immigrants to enter into our country. The cartels now operate within the United States. There are reports that human trafficking is now just as lucrative for Mexican organized crime as illegal drugs.  

Into this mix enter illegal Chinese migrants, the fastest-growing demographic crossing the southern border. Chinese are becoming the money launderers of choice for the cartels. The Chinese use a variety of money laundering methods, including trade-based value transfer, black market exchanges, “flying money,” and mobile payments and mirror swaps using primarily Chinese phone apps. Our law enforcement agencies are hard-pressed to counter them. 

Illegal Chinese immigrants are also increasingly engaged in the lucrative illicit marijuana trade through high volume marijuana farms found from Maine to California. For example, of the nearly 1,000 illegal marijuana farms shut down in Oklahoma between 2021 and 2023, almost 90 percent were linked to illegal Chinese, and many are directly linked to Chinese organized crime. Do we deport illegal Chinese that work at the labor-intensive marijuana farms?

Many of those trafficked are indentured. They have debts to pay. Organized crime groups make billions every year forcing newly arrived mostly Asian women to have sex in some 9,000 massage parlors and other locations found along highways and behind storefronts in strip malls across the country. Do we deport women, some with small children, who come to America with the hope of finding a better life and then find themselves forced to be sex workers? What about the Chinese organized crime members who control them?  

There are also national security concerns with the Biden-Harris open border policy. Military-age Chinese males are flooding into the United States. With tensions with China already high, the situation is extremely dangerous as communist China practices forms of asymmetric warfare. 

China’s National Intelligence Law from 2017 requires organizations and citizens, wherever they are in the world, to “support, assist and cooperate with the state intelligence work.” The law gives Chinese intelligence agencies authority to carry out their work both inside and outside of China. There is a vast Chinese espionage presence within the United States. Chinese living and working in America can be ordered to cooperate with the motherland. It is hard to refuse such commands. Both overt intimidation and subtle veiled threats are made—often involving harm to family members back in China.  

In the fiscal year 2021 alone, over 350 individuals on the terrorist watchlist were apprehended attempting to illegally cross our Southwest border—representing a 2,000 percent increase  compared to Donald Trump’s four years in office. The numbers do not reflect those who were not encountered. And thousands of additional people are here illegally from countries on the State Sponsors of Terrorism list. Despite assurances from Biden administration officials who know better, we don’t know their backgrounds and cannot vet them properly. The situation is nothing short of a ticking time bomb.   

The annual price tag of illegal immigration costs federal and state governments $150.7 billion. It is money that our $35 trillion-in-debt-nation can’t afford. The indirect costs include environmental degradation, the spread of communicable diseases, societal divisiveness, lack of affordable housing, deteriorating education, social services, medical care, loss of jobs for citizens, and the list goes on.  

To put things in perspective, President Trump requested $20 billion for a border wall. We were told the price tag was too high. 

Illegal immigration also illustrates the appalling spending priorities of the Biden-Harris administration. For example, Hurricane Helene is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans. Hundreds more are missing. Vast areas of our country are in ruin. Our fellow citizens are hurting. Yet, it seems there is no more money in the budget for relief services. Meanwhile, FEMA spent over $1 billion on assistance to illegal immigrants over the last two years. Money, manpower, and supplies are squandered, hindering relief to American citizens suffering from natural disasters.

The debate about deportations will be contentious. The Left and its media supporters will use their usual tactics. They will cry “racism.” Progressives will preach to us about diversity, tolerance, and inclusivity. The media will report on young nuclear immigrant families being separated and “uprooted.” Democratic politicians will be filmed in front of “deportation centers” that they will label “concentration camps.” They will tell us that “We are better than this.”   The debate about deportations will be contentious. The Left and its media supporters will use their usual tactics. They will cry “racism.” Tweet This

But when the vitriol and divisiveness is most intense, we should all remember that none of this had to happen. At the end of the Trump administration, our borders were relatively secure. The record shows that Biden-Harris allowed—and, by their policies, encouraged—illegals to pour into our country. It was a purposeful choice made by those in power to maintain power.  

The Democratic Party, big business, the immigrants themselves, many foreign governments, the Catholic Church, and the NGO immigrant assistance network all benefit from illegal immigration. Follow the money. They are all complicit.  

With insecure borders, our sovereignty disappears. Our America is being fundamentally transformed. A recent poll shows that more than half of all Americans, including a quarter of Democrats, support the mass deportation of illegal immigrants. The majority of Hispanics support Trump’s immigration policies.

If only one innocent American has been killed, the price is too high. Just one young woman brutalized by rape is too much. If only one child has been physically, sexually, or emotionally abused as a result of illegal immigration, the judgment should be harsh. One fentanyl overdose is a tragedy. 

Where is the accountability? 

Where is the contrition?

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, where is the shame?