Missouri state Sen. Jill Carter, R-Granby, plans to file bills in the state legislature to increase border security measures and ensure law enforcement agencies have the resources they need to combat increasing border-related crimes.
Carter, who’s traveled to Texas to meet with officials, including law enforcement, wants to get ahead of a crisis in her district, which includes the counties of Jasper and Newton.
“We need to be prepared,” she said. One way to do that, she said, is to file legislation similar to what was filed in Texas to address an unprecedented border crisis. Missouri has joined Texas in its border enforcement efforts. Its former attorney general, Eric Schmitt, was among the first to join Texas in suing the Biden administration over border policies. Missouri’s congressional delegation is also demanding answers about a violent Venezuelan gang now in the state, The Center Square reported.
The border crisis “is impacting my community. We are downstream from what’s been happening in Texas. Our law enforcement and legislators need to be prepared to understand the reality of what we are facing,” she told The Center Square.
While many claim illegal border crossers are families who want a better life, federal data shows the overwhelming majority are single military age men, The Center Square reported.
As illegal border crossings increased under the Biden administration, so also did crime. Four years later, smaller towns thousands of miles from the US-Mexico border are experiencing reverberating effects. This includes Joplin, a southwestern Missouri town located near the Oklahoma and Kansas state lines in Carter’s district, roughly 1,000 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border.
Joplin, Jasper and Newton counties are also in a geographic bullseye, falling between Tulsa and St. Louis along I-44, and south of Kansas City along I-49. Both highways are key thoroughfares used by criminals to move drugs and people identified by law enforcement.
While Carter’s district hasn’t experienced the level of crime that Texas districts have, Jasper County residents were shocked two months ago when an Oklahoma man’s body was found off of I-44, allegedly murdered by two Honduran brothers, both in the country illegally.
The murder followed a similar pattern to those in Texas: a body found on the side of the road, a single gunshot to the head, a stolen car, and culprits later connected to multiple violent crimes in other cities and often in other states, The Center Square has reported.
After the murder, one Honduran was arrested for a DWI, another for a carjacking, shooting one woman in the chest and pistol whipping another, according to the Jasper County Sheriff’s Office. They fled the scene but were caught by law enforcement, arrested and charged with multiple felonies.
Carter and others are also concerned about the cost to taxpayers for social services and strains on the public school system after thousands of foreign nationals have been brought into her district, including from Countries of Particular Concern (CPC) and State Sponsors of Terrorism (SST).
According to a “Joplin Schools Refugee Fact Sheet” published by a Joplin-based refugee and immigrant group obtained by The Center Square, 50 Afghan refugees were brought into the community after the Biden administration’s 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal. This was after inspector general reports found that the Biden administration did not properly vet Afghans released into the U.S.
In fiscal 2024, 1,484 refugees were brought into Missouri through this one organization. Another 2,735 are expected in fiscal 2025. Among them, roughly 200 were brought into Joplin in fiscal 2024; 250 are expected in fiscal 2025, according to the document.
As a result, the Joplin Public School system had 80 foreign national students enrolled in the spring, and 120 by August when the school year started, according to the document. They are citizens of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sudan, Somalia, the Congo, Haiti, the Ivory Coast, Ukraine, Venezuela, Uganda, Iran, Cuba, and Yemen. There are currently roughly 40 languages now spoken in a public school system that serves a population of roughly 51,000 in a mostly rural farming community.
Under the Biden administration, at least 1.6 million illegal border crossers were publicly reported from four CPCs, The Center Square reported. The U.S. State Department designated 12 countries as CPCs due to their policies of “systematic, ongoing, egregious violations of religious freedom,” which includes “torture, prolonged detention without charges, forced disappearance, or other flagrant denial of life, liberty, or security of persons.” Of the 12, four are designated SSTs: Cuba, North Korea, and Iran.
Those brought into Missouri, according to the document, are from at least one CPC, Pakistan, and two SSTs, Cuba and Iran. They were brought in after Biden extended national emergencies related to terrorism and security threats posed by Iran, the Congo, Afghanistan and others.
Joplin now has students enrolled from countries identified by the federal government as national security threats.
“My district, and Missouri, are at a crossroads,” Carter told The Center Square. “We are committed to being a part of the solution and want to ensure that the effects of the border crisis don’t worsen. Four years into the most disastrous border crisis in history, we are seeing worrying trends related to crime and our residents’ safety and security. I’m committed to protecting our residents, all children in the public school system, and ensuring our law enforcement and public services have the resources they need. My goal is to ensure transparency and accountability to Missouri taxpayers through the bills I and others will be filing.”
