Missouri police have arrested Jose Barrera, an illegal immigrant, for stabbing two people at a laundromat on Sunday. Both victims suffered non-life-threatening injuries.
Barrera attacked the first victim after the pair engaged in a verbal exchange at Highlander Laundry in O’Fallon, Mo. Using a pocketknife hidden in his sock, Barrera stabbed the first victim in the back, and when the second victim tried to intervene, Barrera stabbed him in the back as well.
The Department of Homeland Security has issued a detainer on Barrera, the O’Fallon Police Department said on Tuesday, “recognizing him as an undocumented immigrant who entered the United States through Eagle Pass, TX in 2021.”
A prosecuting attorney for the county of St. Charles issued warrants against Barrera for two counts of first-degree assault and two counts of armed criminal action.
This weekend’s laundromat stabbing comes after a string of violent incidents perpetrated by illegal immigrants. Jose Antonio Ibarra, an illegal immigrant from Venezuela, was charged with 22-year-old Laken Riley’s murder in February. Ibarra illegally entered the country through Texas in 2022 and was arrested in New York shortly after for endangering a child, but was released before ICE could issue a detainer.
In Maryland in February, El Salvador native Nilson Noel Trejo-Granados, was arrested for allegedly murdering two-year-old Jeremy Poou Caceres outside of an apartment complex. Most recently in March, Haitian illegal immigrant Cory B. Alvarez was charged with raping a 15-year-old girl at a Massachusetts hotel, which housed undocumented immigrants.
President Biden has presided over a massive surge in illegal immigration after rolling back a series of Trump-era executive orders immediately upon taking office. A record 2.4 million illegal immigrants were apprehended at the Southern border in fiscal year 2023.
The issue is sure to dominate the 2024 presidential election, with former president Donald Trump pinning the crisis on Biden while the incumbent president takes Republicans to task for killing the recently negotiated bipartisan Senate border deal at Trump’s urging.
Speaking in Texas in February, Trump labeled the recent high-profile incidents “Biden migrant crime.”
“And they’re coming from jails and they’re coming from prisons and they’re coming from mental institutions and they’re coming from insane asylums and they’re terrorists,” Trump said.
Laken Riley’s father said that he thought his daughter’s death was “being used politically to get [votes],” but also said that her murder raises questions about border policy and violent crime.
“Laken has been a rallying cry for secure borders and for the illegal immigration policies of this current administration, but there’s many women we don’t get to hear about,” Jason Riley said.