Immigration

Fiona Harrigan | 3.1.2024 5:15 PM

"The United States is being overrun by the Biden migrant crime. It's a new form of vicious violation to our country," said former President Donald Trump during a visit to the U.S.-Mexico border in Eagle Pass, Texas, on Thursday.

Trump's remarks come at a tense moment in the nation's sentiment toward immigration. Americans now say that immigration is "the most important problem facing the U.S.," according to the results of a Gallup poll published this week. Earlier in February, 57 percent of Americans surveyed by the Pew Research Center said that "the large number of migrants seeking to enter the country leads to more crime." For many, those ideas became more salient last week, when Jose Antonio Ibarra, a Venezuelan man who immigrated to the U.S. illegally, was charged with the murder of Georgia college student Laken Riley.

Riley's murder, along with incidents such as migrants drinking alcohol and consuming drugs in public and getting into fights in New York City, have spurred increased coverage of a "migrant crime" wave. "Over the past month, Fox News hosts, guests and video clips have mentioned 'migrant crime' nearly 90 times, more than half of those in the past 10 days," reported The Washington Post's Philip Bump on Thursday. Numerous right-of-center media outlets have........

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