- The Washington Times - Tuesday, April 16, 2024

Some 264 illegal immigrants sit in jail in Tarrant County, Texas, and among them they face eight counts of murder, Sheriff Bill Waybourn will tell the House Oversight Committee on Tuesday.

The illegal immigrants also face 38 counts of assault with a deadly weapon, five counts of sexual assault, two counts of possession of child pornography, one count of intoxicated homicide and more than 200 other assorted counts.

“These offenders, [many of which] are gang members and outlaws, have left nothing untouched,” the sheriff will say, according to prepared remarks obtained by The Washington Times. “While I do not necessarily think these aliens have a higher crime rate, just the fact these people are illegal in our country and committed crimes is the impact.”

Sheriff Waybourn will testify to the National Security, Border and Foreign Affairs subcommittee, chaired by Rep. Glenn Grothman, Wisconsin Republican. The hearing is titled “How the Border Crisis Impacts Public Safety.”

Mr. Grothman, in remarks kicking off the hearing, will say the illegal immigrants flooding into the country have swollen the docket at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is now monitoring more than 6 million illegal immigrants.

Some 617,000 of those either have criminal convictions or pending criminal charges, Mr. Grothman says.

“The fact is that illegal aliens should not be in the country in the first place and able to commit these crimes,” he says in prepared remarks. “The solutions aren’t hard. Secure the border, stop releasing illegal aliens into the country in droves, and when an illegal alien commits a crime in the community, turn them over to ICE, enforce the law, and remove them from the United States.”

The witnesses are poised to take a particular look at fentanyl and other illegal drugs pouring across the border.

Loudoun County, Virginia, Sheriff Mike Chapman will detail the rise in juvenile overdoses, with 11 overdoses among students at a single high school during six weeks last year.

“Having served as a DEA agent in Miami during the mid and late 80s, I thought I had seen what the worst of the drug problem. I was wrong,” Sheriff Chapman says.

The hearing comes hours before the House is slated to send to the Senate two articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

Mr. Mayorkas will also be on Capitol Hill on Tuesday to testify to the House Homeland Security Committee.

At the Oversight Committee Ken Cuccinelli, who served as acting deputy secretary of Homeland Security in the Trump administration, will tick off a list of names in his prepared testimony of victims slain by illegal immigrants.

They include Kate Steinle, the woman whose death in San Francisco in 2015 at the hands of an illegal immigrant helped propel then-candidate Donald Trump, and Laken Riley, whose death earlier this year drew more attention to the people caught and released on President Biden’s watch.

“President Biden and Secretary Mayorkas are knowingly and willingly sacrificing Americans to appease their anti-American leftist political constituency,” Mr. Cuccinelli says in his prepared remarks.

He also waded into the debate over crime rates among illegal immigrants, saying it shouldn’t matter whether their rate is higher or lower than U.S. citizens.

“The most important point — the critical point is that every murder, every assault, every robbery, every rape, every drunk-driving death and every homicide committed by illegal immigrants is preventable,” he says.

• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.

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