Crime and Border Security Worries Persist Amid Mayorkas Impeachment

As the House voted to impeach Alejandro Mayorkas, Americans cite public safety and national security concerns as top issues.

Lately, the national news cycle has been dominated by the ongoing standoff between Texas Governor Greg Abbott and the Biden administration. Initially, the debate sparked by this incident revolved primarily around questions concerning a state’s authority to police a national border. But more broadly, the incident underscores another theme: the public’s growing concern for the rising rate of crime and illegal border crossings— and the apparent apathy from the institutions responsible for promoting national security.

As the House voted to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, a comprehensive immigration report outlining the many failures of the Mayorkas-run Department of Homeland Security. The report sheds light on a myriad of policy failures, including but not limited to directing subordinates not to detain aliens who are required by law to be detained. It asserts that Mayorkas has “violated his oath of office, abused the powers of his office,” and exhibited behavior “so reckless, so irresponsible, and so serious that he should be impeached, removed from office, and disqualified from holding any further office.”

According to data provided by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, a record-breaking 15,267 arrests of criminal noncitizens were made in the 2023 fiscal year. For context, that number is higher than the total number of criminal noncitizen arrests in 2018, 2019, and 2020 combined. 

As is noted by Human Events, “Mayorkas assumed office in February of 2021 and annual arrests for that fiscal year shot from 2,438 to 10,763— a 441 percent increase.” In 2022, it rose yet again to a staggering 12,028. All of this demonstrates the scope of the crisis at the border and an unprecedented level of migrant crossings. 

House support for Mayorkas impeachment comes as a Gallup poll conducted in late 2023 revealed that 77 percent of Americans believe that there is more crime in the U.S. than a year ago. Furthermore, 63 percent believe that the crime problem is “extremely/very serious,” which is the highest percentage recorded in the history of this poll.

Despite this, outlets like ABC and NBC News are running stories celebrating the fact that homicide rates fell in major U.S. cities by 13% between 2023 and 2022. This is, however, a misleading statistic.

“In those cities, the crime spikes were huge last year,” said John Walsh, host of America’s Most Wanted, in a recent interview. “They might have gone down [by] two murders this year— that doesn’t mean crime’s going down.” Walsh went on to point out that cities like St. Louis, Baltimore, New Orleans, and Chicago still rank highly on lists of cities sorted by highest homicide rates in the world, with St. Louis in particular frequently in the top ten. “In Chicago, in the last two years, 1,326 murders… and 26,000 stolen cars. That’s just one city.”

It is also unlikely that ABC and NBC will address the recent Fraternal Order of Police report, which revealed that 378 law enforcement officers were shot while on duty in 2023. This is the highest number recorded since the FOP began collecting this data, and it represents a 60% increase from 2018.

Why, then, are certain publications seemingly engaged in what can only be described as damage control, downplaying the significance of America’s worsening crime problem? 

It is reasonable to assume that, as we get closer to the 2024 presidential election, biased outlets will continue to present an overly-simplified narrative of improvement in an attempt to quell Americans’ legitimate concerns about public safety and national security. But doing so does not change reality or serve the public interest. And thus, despite their efforts, crime and the crisis at the border will remain top issues for voters in November.