Supporters of illegal immigration like to portray all of the aliens now flooding across the southern border as benign individuals simply seeking a better life. Many no doubt are, but the latest report from the Texas Department of Public Safety shows just how dangerous some of them are.

That report outlines more than 573,000 criminal offenses committed by illegal aliens “over the course of their entire Texas criminal careers.” And that’s surely just the tip of the iceberg, as the report only covers state offenses, not federal crimes, not crimes committed in other states, and not crimes committed by aliens in the country legally.

But what a shocking catalogue of victimization of Texas residents it is.

The report by the famous Texas Rangers shows that over 344,000 criminal aliens were booked into local Texas jails between June 1, 2011, and June 30, 2021, of which over 235,000 were classified as illegal aliens. The criminal offenses with which they were charged included:

• 1,245 homicides
• 66,924 assaults
• 17,456 burglaries
• 72,835 drug charges
• 980 kidnappings
• 33,335 thefts
• 4,155 robberies
• 7.076 sexual assaults
• 8,332 sexual offenses
• 49,408 obstructing police charges
• 8,317 weapons charges

Keep in mind, as the Texas report says, that these figures “represent the minimum number of crimes associated with criminal illegal aliens” (emphasis added). Why? Because Texas is counting as illegal aliens only those who “previously had an encounter” with the Department of Homeland Security that “resulted in their fingerprints being entered into the DHS IDENT database.”

Except in a relatively small number of cases, aliens who enter the country illegally but “avoid detection by DHS” are not going to be identified as being in the country illegally when they are arrested for committing a crime in Texas.

There are two important points here. First, given the huge number of illegal aliens getting into the country without detection, the number of crimes committed by these aliens in Texas (and other states) is probably much higher than these already-unacceptable numbers.

Second, why were these 235,000 illegal aliens — who were identified because they had been previously detained by DHS — still in Texas, still present in this country, and thus able to commit their crimes? This is the consequence of the “catch and release” policy favored by liberal administrations, including the Biden administration, which the Trump administration tried to end.

The bottom line here is that, using just one of the appalling numbers highlighted by the Texas report, there are 1,245 Texans who would likely still be alive today if we were securing our border and vigorously enforcing our immigration laws by quickly and effectively deporting aliens whose first act is to enter the country illegally, and whose second act is to assault, kidnap, rob and murder our citizens.

As the Texas Department of Public Safety starkly says, this report, “identifies thousands of crimes that should not have occurred and thousands of victims that should not have been victimized because the perpetrator should not be here.”

No truer words have been spoken about the illegal alien problem and the reckless open-border policy of the Biden administration.

Republished from The Heritage Foundation.