In the wake of a series of horrific crimes committed by illegal immigrants, including the brutal murder of a 12-year-old girl in Texas, illegal immigration and how to resolve the ongoing crisis at the southern border is likely to be a major topic in this Thursday’s presidential debate between President Biden and former President Donald Trump.
Two Venezuelan illegal immigrants have been charged with murder in the death of 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray in Houston, Texas. Bail for one of the two defendants was set at $10 million on Monday. Authorities say Nungaray was “lured” under a bridge in Houston, tied up and killed.
The arrest comes the same week that an Ecuadorian national, currently living illegally in the United States, was arrested after a man with a machete raped a 13-year-old girl in broad daylight in a park. Police also announced last week that an illegal immigrant from El Salvador had been arrested for the murder of Rachel Morin, a mother of five from Maryland. This horrific crime is part of a series of crimes committed by illegal immigrants across the United States.
Jocelyn Nangaray murder case: Bail set at $10 million for illegal immigrant suspect in Houston girl’s murder
Former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Path to the Majority Policy Conference in Washington, US, 22 June 2024. (Evelyn Hochstein/Reuters)
The arrests come just days before this week’s CNN presidential debate between Trump and Biden, where immigration was already expected to dominate the agenda due to the ongoing crisis at the southern border.
The number of migrants crossing the U.S. border is at an all-time high — more than 2.4 million in fiscal 2023 alone, surpassing all three previous years of record highs — and Republicans and Trump have harshly criticized Biden for the crisis, accusing it of his policies and the rollback of Trump-era policies that have fueled it.
“These are Biden immigrants,” Trump told Fox News Digital last week. “They’re flooding into our country. They’re flooding into our cities and our states.”
If elected, Trump has pledged to launch the largest domestic deportation operation in U.S. history and end “the Biden Administration’s open border policy in its entirety.” He has also pledged to send special forces to the border and reinstate the 2017 travel ban.
Prosecutors say suspect lured and killed 12-year-old Texas girl
President Biden has made significant moves on immigration in recent weeks. (Getty Images)
Biden, meanwhile, has said Congress needs to act to pass immigration reform to fix a “broken” immigration system. The Biden administration introduced legislation on its first day, but Republicans have resisted including a path to citizenship for the millions of undocumented immigrants already in the U.S.
Biden also supported a bipartisan Senate bill introduced earlier this year that failed to gain traction in the Senate, and he has blamed Trump for blocking the bill, which included additional funding for border security and a mechanism for closing the border above certain levels.
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“Republicans, not all of them, have withdrawn from this bill. Why? Because Donald Trump told them to.” He said During February.
Biden has made two big moves on immigration in recent weeks amid a deadlock in Congress. One is to further restrict migrants’ ability to apply for asylum if the average number of daily encounters at the border exceeds 2,500. Last week, he also announced exemptions from deportation for some undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens. But Biden has repeatedly said that this is not enough and that he needs Congress to act to fix the system.
Biden is likely to go into the debate armed with data showing numbers at the border are trending downward: Encounters at the southern border in May totaled 170,723, the lowest month this fiscal year and the lowest May month since Biden took office.
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Additionally, Fox News reports that illegal border crossings continue to plummet, with just under 1,900 arrests on Sunday, one of the lowest days since the beginning of 2021.
But Trump is likely to highlight crimes committed by those released into the US, particularly those released during Biden’s presidency, including the murder of Jocelyn Nungarey.
Fox News’ Greg Norman and Bill Melugin contributed to this report.
