Opinion - How many dead Americans will it take for Democrats to start caring?
Democrats are like that guy running the three-card Monte game in Times Square at 3:00 a.m.. They talk non-stop for the express purpose of distracting whatever sucker plunked down $20 to 'find the red queen.' The subject of the talking doesn't matter, only the distraction it creates. 'Hey, check out that guy's shoes!' That keeps the scam going.
That's how Democrats are when it comes to illegal immigration — talking non-stop without ever saying anything, in the hope that no one will notice that every single American murdered by an illegal alien would be alive today had the immigration laws just been enforced as written.
Laken Riley, for example, would still be alive. So would Kate Steinle, Rachel Morin, and every single other American murdered by illegal aliens.
Morin's killer, 24-year-old rapist Victor Martinez-Hernandez, was convicted Monday of murdering and raping her. The illegal immigrant from El Salvador will spend the rest of his life in prison, and Rachel's family will spend the rest of their lives missing her, only because Democrats allowed in all comers who marched across the U.S.-Mexico border in 2022.
Democrats insist that immigrant commit fewer crimes than Americans do, as if that would comfort victims' families. But there are two truths they refuse to confront. The first is that using immigration law to keep out killers prevents every single murder they would otherwise commit. Every crime by any illegal immigrant is easily preventable without having to write new laws or even violate anyone's rights.
The other truth they won't confront is that we have no idea whether immigrants (or illegal immigrants) commit more crimes or not, and it's because the Biden administration and state-level Democrats have not allowed the collection of the data we would need to prove or disprove the claim.
How many illegal immigrants are convicted of crimes against Americans every year? We don't know. It's only reported on a case-by-case basis, and then only if the story is reported in the media.
There is very limited data on 'non-citizens,' but that deliberately confuses legal and illegal immigrants. This is a very important distinction, since the first Trump administration actually started to break out the data and found that 94 percent of immigrants in federal prisons are illegal immigrants. Biden discontinued this recordkeeping, naturally, because we would hate to get an actual answer.
Last September, Reuters ran a 'fact-check' titled, 'No evidence 4,000 people are killed yearly by undocumented immigrants.' In the story, the news service declared, 'There is no nationwide data on crimes committed specifically by undocumented immigrants, but research shows they do not commit crimes at a higher rate than native-born Americans.'
Reuters made these two contradictory claims — there is 'no evidence' and yet 'research shows' — in order to distract from the fact that there would be zero illegal alien crime-victims if the offenders were simply excluded from the country. And yes, surprise, surprise, research by open-borders activist groups fighting to keep illegal aliens in the country shows exactly what they want it to show.
Alex Nowrasteh of the Cato Institute, a libertarian organization that advocates for open borders, declared 'I've seen zero evidence for illegal immigrants killing 4,000 people a year. I've never seen that number defended by anybody spreading it.'
Once again, here we have a claim that only raises uncertainty, not a rebuttal. And again, it merely distracts from the real issue: One hundred percent of Americans murdered by illegal immigrants would still be alive if the aliens had not been allowed to enter and live illegally in our country in the first place.
Thanks to the Biden administration and Democrats' deliberate sabotage of our immigration enforcement, some large number of Americans have been murdered, many American women raped, many American children abused, many Americans injured or killed in accidents caused by unlicensed or drunk drivers who were illegal immigrants.
Not a single one of these victims would have have suffered this fate if Biden had not deliberately let in their victimizers. But even then, at least some of these crimes could have been prevented anyway, if not for Democratic sanctuary city laws, which protected criminals from deportation even when they had earlier run-ins with police.
In the case of Morin, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) released a statement after her murder, saying, 'My heart breaks for the Morin family.' I can find no evidence he met with Morin's family or even tried to. Yet in the case of illegal immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man previously ordered removed from the U.S. — a man whom U.S. authorities say is a gang member — Van Hollen is planning to travel to El Salvador to see how he is doing and demand his return to the U.S.
This invites the most fundamental question: Is there any number of Americans dead, injured, or otherwise victimized at the hands of illegal aliens that will make Democrats start caring? I don't see any evidence for it.
Derek Hunter is host of the Derek Hunter Podcast and a former staffer for the late Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.).
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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