A top issue for Americans this election cycle is the border crisis, embodied by the millions of illegal aliens who have flooded into the U.S. during the Biden-Harris years. Another major issue for voters is the rise in crime across the country over that same time span.

Donald Trump has tied the two issues together, arguing that the Biden-Harris administration’s de facto open border policies have directly fueled the rise in crime. Infamously, ABC News’s moderators falsely fact-checked Trump when he made this claim during his lone debate with Kamala Harris in September.

Early on in the debate, Trump was asked about his proposal to enact “the largest deportation operation” in American history. He blamed Harris and Joe Biden for allowing “criminals, many many millions of criminals, they allowed terrorists, they allowed common street criminals, they allowed people to come in, drug dealers, to come into our country.” He then added, “All over the world, crime is down, all over the world except here. Crime here is up and through the roof, despite their fraudulent statements that they made.”

ABC moderator David Muir then became a fact-checker: “President Trump, as you know, the FBI says overall violent crime is actually coming down in this country.” Well, that was until the FBI quietly updated its crime statistics, which unsurprisingly supported Trump’s claim. Crime is up across the country. But more importantly, there is a direct connection between the surging population of illegal aliens living in the country and the rising crime rate.

Muir’s statement repeats a popular illegal immigration myth — that not only is there no indication that illegal immigration leads to more crime, but that the population of illegals living in the U.S. has a lower overall crime rate than U.S. citizens.

On its face, that claim is absurd, given that an illegal alien, by definition, has committed a crime by entering the U.S. without permission. Furthermore, since crime data do not differentiate crimes committed by illegals versus American citizens, the assertion that illegals are more law-abiding is unsupported.

However, irrespective of the lack of data, one thing is indisputable: Individuals like Georgia nursing student Laken Riley would not have been murdered by an illegal alien had the Biden-Harris administration actually secured the border and deported illegal immigrants rather than simply allowing them to flow through.

How many Americans would still be with us had the Biden-Harris administration not prioritized an open border over the security of the American people? How many fewer victims of sexual assault would there be today? How many fewer deaths from fentanyl overdoses? How many fewer traffic deaths? How many fewer robberies? How many fewer women and children being sex-trafficked? In short, how much less overall crime would communities nationwide be dealing with if it weren’t for the Biden-Harris border malfeasance? Any crime committed by an illegal alien would not have happened if that alien hadn’t been allowed to enter the country.

Thanks to the Biden-Harris regime, Mexican gangs are taking up residence in places as far from the southern border as Montana, where they are taking control of the illegal drug market. In Oklahoma, Chinese gangs have established a black market for marijuana. Venezuelan gangs are running amok in several cities. In each case, the result is a rise in violent crime as these gangs fight for control of the local markets.

Illegal immigration has become an issue in both small towns and big cities. An unwillingness to uphold our nation’s laws and enforce its boundaries is why this problem has grown so acute, and it’s one reason why we have such a surge in crime nationwide.