POLITICS: Colorado attack shows why ICE can’t just focus on ‘criminals’

On Sunday, Mohamed Sabry Soliman — an Egyptian national admitted under the Biden administration who overstayed a tourist visa — was named as a suspect in a heinous anti-Semitic attack in Boulder, Colo. His arrest shows why “border czar” Tom Homan can’t just focus on criminal illegal aliens.

An estimated 8 million illegal migrants poured into the United States over the Southwest border under Biden, and the media’s attention has almost exclusively focused on them.

But illegal entrants are just a part of a US unauthorized population the Center for Immigration Studies conservatively estimates at 15.4 million. 

The rest came legally as “nonimmigrants” — students, tourists, businesspeople, etc.

According to the Migration Policy Institute, there were 132.4 million admissions of foreign nationals as nonimmigrants in FY 2023, down from more than 186 million in FY 2019 but still higher than the 96.8 million who came in FY 2022, when Soliman purportedly entered.

Most, but not all, went back home as they were supposed to. A US Customs and Border Protection report estimates that among the nonimmigrants who came through airports and seaports and who were expected to depart in FY 2023, 1.45%, or 565,155 in total, didn’t go home like they should have.

CBP estimated the overstay rate that year for Egyptian nationals who came as nonimmigrant visitors to be even higher — 7.56%, or 3,264 individual “overstay events.” 

In July 2015, then-Sen. (and now Secretary of State) Marco Rubio claimed 40% of all the illegal aliens in the United States were nonimmigrant overstays. If that percentage is lower now, it’s because millions of migrants entered illegally under Biden, not because more nonimmigrants have respected the law and gone home. 

President Donald Trump has tasked Homan with overseeing a “mass deportation” program to drive down the illegal population in the United States. 

Thus far, that plan has largely focused on aliens with criminal arrests or convictions. For example, the White House reports that of the nearly 40,000 aliens taken into custody during the first 50 days of the current administration, 75% were accused or convicted criminals.

But immigration laws require the removal of all aliens here illegally, not just the least sympathetic. They are making a mockery of our rules, and avoiding the necessary vetting for asylum seekers.

Soliman is presumed innocent until proven guilty, but if he’s responsible for this attack, his actions harken back to another Egyptian overstay, Hesham Hedayet, who murdered two and wounded three others during a July 4, 2002, attack at the El Al counter at Los Angeles International Airport.

It’s reported Soliman “filed a claim with US Citizenship and Immigration Services” — likely asylum — and if true it’s yet another similarity to Hedayet. Hedayet was denied asylum, but was never deported. Two years later, his wife won the fraud-riddled “visa lottery,” allowing him to stay and carry out his attack.

We can’t know who the next alien criminal or terrorist will be — which is why Trump and Homan must follow through on their deportation promises.     

Andrew Arthur is the fellow in law and policy at the Center for Immigration Studies.