At a hearing this week of the House Committee on Homeland Security, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) desperately tried to use isolated examples of tragedies originating with undocumented immigrants to make some kind of broader point against those groups. Under her logic, should Americans be deported from their own country because of the violent crime rates seen among people born here? It just doesn’t track.
Greene challenged a Democratic Party-aligned witness, Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, about past commentary on social media in which he described a relatively pleasant trip to the southern border with an elderly family member of his. Greene referenced a purported total of border enforcement officers’ encounters with migrants from around that same period — though it’s unclear that a reported “encounter” with a migrant means much of anything specific about who is actually entering the United States, considering the range of possible outcomes. Yet, the higher numbers serve Republicans’ political purposes!
“I’m aware of the numbers, and I stand by my statements that the border communities are some of the safest and best communities in the country, as I’m sure my fellow panelists would agree,” Reichlin-Melnick replied.
Greene’s examples included a deadly car crash purportedly caused by an undocumented immigrant. “It’s undoubtedly a tragedy, but again, data shows that undocumented immigrants on average commit fewer crimes than native-born citizens,” Reichlin-Melnick said.
Elsewhere in her questioning, Greene set up the witnesses more aligned with her perspective to offer support for the Trump administration’s approach of making migrants seeking asylum wait in dangerous conditions outside the country. “It certainly seems like before January of 2021, this problem was a lot less significant in places like New York,” Joseph Borelli, a New York City official, said. This characterization of events ignores a key reason why migrants have arrived in New York City in a situation that Borelli describes as a problem. GOP officials from the southern parts of the country have provided for transportation that takes some of these immigrating individuals to areas where Dems control local government.
Check out Greene’s questioning below:
