Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R-TX) agreed with former President Bill Clinton that the victims of violent crime would be alive if there was better border security. But he told Fox News that would be the case “if it weren’t for Kamala Harris and Joe Biden.”
While speaking in Georgia on Monday, Clinton told reporters that if immigrants were properly screened, innocent people such as Laken Riley wouldn’t have been killed, blaming the situation on former President Donald Trump.
“A young woman who had been killed by an immigrant. Yeah, well, if they’d all been properly vetted, that probably wouldn’t have happened,” Clinton said. “Trump killed the bill. The bill was being written by senior Republicans in the Senate, and he killed the bill. Why?”
The past three years have resulted in an unprecedented increase in illegal border crossings upward of 10 million. However, despite over 1.5 million crossing from all borders between October 2023 and September 2024 alone, federal law enforcement officials only apprehended 56,000 immigrants over the same amount of time. This leaves the majority of those who entered unvetted, which Patrick implied leads to instances of violent crime.
“When I think about the young lady in Georgia, she would be alive today if it weren’t for Kamala Harris and Joe Biden. Bottom line,” Patrick said on The Ingraham Angle Monday. “Blood is on her hands.”
Patrick also mentioned Jocelyn Nungaray, a 12-year-old girl who was slain in Houston, allegedly by two illegal immigrants.
“We aren’t racists. Americans aren’t against immigration. So many of our families have immigrants at some point. But we all have common sense. That is, you can’t let people into this country that endanger this country. And these people endanger the country,” Patrick said. “Four years ago, this country was secure and safe.”
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Meanwhile, Texas has taken border security into its own hands by launching Operation Lone Star in March 2021, which has led to the apprehensions of 521,100 illegal immigrants and over 47,400 criminal arrests that include 41,000 felony charges.
The state credits its increased arrests to this operation as illegal crossings into Texas decreased by 86% recently.