This is a lightly edited transcript of an interview on the Aug. 23 Daily Signal podcast.
President Donald Trump: You heard about today with the illegal alien coming in, very sadly, from Mexico, and you saw what happened to that incredible, beautiful young woman. It should have never happened. Illegally in our country. We’ve had a huge impact, but the laws are so bad. The immigration laws are such a disgrace.
Katrina Trinko: That was President Trump Tuesday night at a rally, speaking about Mollie Tibbetts, the missing college student whose case has gained nationwide coverage. On Tuesday, it was announced that Cristhian Bahena Rivera, a 24-year-old who is reportedly an illegal immigrant, was being charged for first-degree murder in the Tibbetts case.
Joining us to discuss is Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Hans, this case has brought renewed attention to the issue of illegal immigration and crime. Does the U.S. need to change policy to deal with this issue?
von Spakovsky: The answer is yes. What’s so sad about what happened to Mollie Tibbetts is that she’s one of many Americans who have lost their lives because of our lack of enforcement of our immigration laws.
I’ll give you a quick example of what I mean. In February of this year, the Texas Department of Public Safety released a study. What they did is they took a look at all of the aliens who were in state and county jails all over Texas from 2011 through 2018. Two-thirds of them are here illegally. They found that those individuals had been charged with 650,000 criminal offenses, including 600 murders.
There are literally hundreds of victims who would be alive today in Texas if those illegal aliens had been stopped at the border or, when they were caught inside the United States, had been quickly deported.
Sanctuary cities who provide sanctuaries for illegal aliens, including those who are arrested and put in local jails, are just creating sanctuaries for criminals.
Daniel Davis: We don’t often hear about those cases where folks are killed by those who are here illegally. We knew about Kate Steinle and some others that made some headlines. Looking at this case, tell us what we know about the guy who killed Mollie Tibbetts.
von Spakovsky: Well, supposedly, he hadn’t been arrested before. His local employer claims that they checked the E-Verify system and that he cleared. We’ll have to see if that’s really true or whether that’s simply a claim that they’re making. It’s hard for me to believe that there weren’t a lot of people wherever he lived and worked that didn’t realize that he was here illegally. Protecting his status meant that he could become a criminal and victimize this poor family.
Yeah, you’re right. We only hear about these cases occasionally, but there’s an organization called The Remembrance Project that is made up of many, many families whose family members have been the victims of illegal aliens who are here. In other cases, cases where they were previously arrested, convicted of local crimes, and then let loose instead of being deported from the country. And every single one of those individuals would be alive today if that alien were not in the country.
Trinko: If someone tries to come to the United States legally, are they screened? Would local crimes that they commit in the past be on the authority’s radar?
von Spakovsky: Well, it depends. For example, what’s been in the news lately, a lot of course, is the DACA program. The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that President [Barack] Obama put up. The background was not verified and checked by the Department of Homeland Security of the vast majority of those DACA beneficiaries when they were given lawful status by the Obama administration. In fact, DHS had a program of only occasionally randomly checking. So we actually don’t know about the criminal backgrounds of 99 percent of the people who got DACA status and the ability to stay in the country.
We do know that thousands of them have since been discovered to have criminal backgrounds, who have committed criminal violations of the law, including, I think, at least 2,000 DACA beneficiaries who’ve been thrown out of the program because of their gang affiliation, including with MS-13, which is one of the most dangerous criminal gangs in the world.
Davis: In this case, do you expect the murderer to be charged with anything other than murder? Do you think he’ll get anything extra for being here illegally?
von Spakovsky: Well, he’s been charged with first-degree murder. We don’t know what the end result of that would be, but clearly what needs to happen is hopefully he will be convicted and will never, ever be let out of prison or hopefully will get the death penalty, one or the other, so that he’s never on the streets again where he can endanger other families and other Americans.
Trinko: Are there other components of immigration policy that this shows we need to address? I’ve seen one of the points made on Twitter is that this shows this is not just a border state issue. Iowa obviously doesn’t share a border with Mexico or any other countries. What does this say about the broader problem?
von Spakovsky: In fact, we not only have to secure our borders, but we have to enhance our interior enforcement. It’s the interior enforcement that all these sanctuary cities all over the country are trying to interfere with and obstruct. ICE needs to be able to find particularly criminal aliens all over the country and get them out of the country.
When we have places like Philadelphia saying that we’re not gonna provide you any information about illegal aliens who we arrest, what are they doing? They’re protecting criminals to the detriment of the citizens and residents of the city.
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