A bombshell letter written by the deputy director for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) recently revealed that there are a staggering 425,431 noncitizen convicted criminals as well as 222,141 noncitizens with pending criminal charges on the agency’s non-detained docket.

These numbers pertain to any illegal immigrant released from detention into the interior of the United States with either final deportation orders or those awaiting an immigration court hearing.

If that wasn’t bad enough, it gets much worse once you drill down into the numbers, as approximately 13,000 illegal immigrants on the non-detained docket have been convicted of homicide, 1,845 are currently facing homicide charges, and 16,000 have been convicted of sexual assault.

These alarming statistics challenge the narrative promoted by immigration advocates that immigrants are “less likely to commit crimes than U.S.-born citizens.”

That said, every crime committed by an illegal immigrant, beginning with the initial act of unlawfully entering the country, is an event that should never have occurred. Consequently, any criminal activity that follows is entirely preventable had proper immigration enforcement been in place from the start.

This includes heinous crimes like the killing of 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray allegedly by two Venezuelan nationals who had recently entered the United States illegally but were released into the interior of the country. Or the rape and murder of Rachel Morin, a mother of five, allegedly by an illegal immigrant from El Salvador, who is also accused of murder in his home country in addition to raping a mother and her 9-year-old daughter in Los Angeles. There are also the tens of thousands of Americans killed every year by the fentanyl flowing across our border.

These crimes, as well as the added stress that mass immigration puts on local infrastructure and our national culture, are entirely preventable if our ruling elites valued U.S. sovereignty and the safety of its citizens. Instead, the basic tenets of nationhood have been cast aside and the damage has been exasperated under the Biden-Harris Administration.

Today, the total foreign-born or immigrant population (legal and illegal) is estimated to be approximately 51.6 million, an increase of around 6.6 million since Biden and Harris took office. Of that, 51.6 million, approximately 16.8 million are illegal aliens. All told, immigrants now represent 15.6 percent of the U.S. population — the highest in history.

As Kamala Harris tries to distance herself from her failures as “border czar,” these damning immigration statistics are impossible to ignore. Despite continued support from a sympathetic media, Harris is trying to shift her stance to sound tough on border security, though this is clearly more symbolic than substantive.

Speaking in the Arizona border town of Douglas, Harris declared that the US is both a “sovereign nation” and a “country of immigrants” and said as president, she would strengthen controls at the southern border while working “to fix our broken system of immigration.”

It’s important to note that when Democrats talk about “fixing our broken system of immigration,” what they really mean is the expansion of pathways to citizenship for legal and illegal immigrants alike, as evidenced by Harris pledging to revive the failed bipartisan border security bill if she becomes president.

The truth is the Democrats and Republicans who negotiated this bill do not want to stop mass immigration. They simply want to solve the “crisis” at the border so mass immigration can become more efficient, systematized, and ultimately legal because both sides benefit from it. The left gets to change America’s demographics, creating and solidifying a reliable Democratic voting bloc for generations. On the right, the “Chamber of Commerce” members of the GOP secure their steady influx of cheap labor.

This quid pro quo within the bill was made clear by essentially guaranteeing an annual influx of at least 1,825,000 legal immigrants into the country while allowing anyone who is granted asylum to receive near-instant work permits.

The authors of the bill claimed there would be a “raised” standard for achieving asylum status, but the prospect of immediate work authorizations would be a magnet for immigrants and a boon to U.S. businesses who want nothing more than to keep American wages suppressed. Once these policies are in place, mass amnesty will soon follow, as Harris has explicitly stated she desires an “earned pathway to citizenship” for migrants who illegally cross the border.

In stark contrast, Donald Trump rightfully points out that by allowing millions of illegal immigrants into the country under her watch, Harris sold out America, stating that “there’s no greater act of disloyalty than to extinguish the sovereignty of your own nation.”

To truly solve this crisis, “comprehensive immigration reform” would actually mean severely restricting immigration for decades, as it was under the Immigration Act of 1924, along with the mass deportation of illegal aliens residing within our borders. Trump has pledged to do just that, promising to conduct “the largest deportation in the history of our country” if he is reelected.

British professor Stafford Beer famously stated, “The purpose of a system is what it does,” emphasizing that a system’s true purpose is revealed through its outcomes, not its intentions. As he pointed out, “There is no sense in claiming that the purpose of a system is what it consistently fails to achieve.”

Applying this logic to the current U.S. immigration system, it becomes clear that, in many instances, the system fails to enrich American communities as claimed.

By allowing millions of illegal immigrants and convicted criminals to remain in the country, our immigration system not only fails to bolster community safety and social cohesion but deliberately undermines it.