Alan Wilson Takes Government-Funded Trip to Southern Border | Palmetto Politics

COLUMBIA — South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson made a taxpayer-funded trip to a Texas border city this week to meet with state and federal officials about a surge in drug and human trafficking in the Palmetto State, which he says is fueled by a continued increase in undocumented migrants entering the country.

Wilson, along with two Republican attorneys general from southern states, visited the U.S. border with Mexico to meet with officials from the Texas Department of Public Safety and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. They discussed the role illegal immigration plays in the recent surge in domestic cases linked to Mexican drug cartels.

“Every state is a border state because we are all seeing the effects of the Biden administration’s open border policies,” Wilson said. “We have state grand jury cases that have involved ties to Mexican cartels that have resulted in drugs being brought across the border and into South Carolina.”

The extent to which immigration affects South Carolina’s crime rate is largely unknown, leading some to criticize the Republican prosecutor’s trip as nothing more than a political stunt amid a broader national debate over immigration ahead of the upcoming 2024 election between Republican former President Donald Trump and Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.

At the national level, immigration rates have skyrocketed.

From May onwards, some According to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, 3.6 million people had asylum cases pending in U.S. immigration court, up nearly 800,000 from the end of 2023.

While data on the state’s illegal population is scarce, census data shows the state’s immigrant population has increased 133.9 percent since 2000, with the majority living in the Upstate and Lowcountry, according to figures from the S.C. Commission on Minority Affairs.

In that wave, there are a few examples of crimes related to the current state of the border, often attracting a lot of media attention.

Wilson’s “Las Señoritas” operation last year netted 170 indictments against 43 suspects in Upstate who were allegedly linked to a sextet of individuals with ties to Mexico’s Jalisco New Generation Cartel. Meanwhile, cartel-related crimes in South Carolina have continued for years in both rural and urban areas of the state.

The DEA has also alleged that fentanyl from Mexico has caused a rapid increase in drug overdose deaths nationwide. Fentanyl deaths in South Carolina rose 35 percent between 2020 and 2021, according to state statistics.

But at this point, there is no factual data to support the claim that the presence of undocumented immigrants in South Carolina is actually causing crimes to be committed. There is only anecdotal evidence.

While the state Attorney General’s Office claims that illegal immigrants are often involved in their grand jury drug trafficking cases, the office does not keep track of how many, and neither does the state’s law enforcement department.

According to statistics from SLED, the number of crimes of all types in the state of South Carolina decreased in 2023. Data from the United States Sentencing Commission from 2023 showed that the number of immigration-related crimes in South Carolina was significantly lower than the national average.

An official in Wilson’s office said the attorney general, now in his fourth term, can only evaluate what he sees.

“We have seen an increase because of the cases we are treating,” spokesman Robert Kittle said Sept. 4 when asked for specific data on those cases.

“But you know, we don’t know what we don’t know,” he added. “And we didn’t catch the people we didn’t catch.”

Also in attendance were Attorneys General Chris Carr of Georgia and Jason Miyares of Virginia.

Wilson’s critics say the visit to El Paso, which cost taxpayers $2,647 in airfare for him and an aide, was little more than a political stunt that drew unnecessary attention to illegal immigration when other problems in the state, such as domestic violence, which ranks among the worst in the nation, deserve more attention.

“It’s a dog whistle,” said Sue Berkowitz, policy director for immigration and labor rights group SC Appleseed. “It’s a distraction, and it’s all about politics. And that’s unfortunate. America is a safe haven. People come here because they’re trying to do what’s best for their children, because they’re dealing with crime in their country, not because they want to come here and commit crimes in our country.”

Others noted that South Carolina law has long excluded undocumented immigrants. Undocumented immigrants cannot attend public colleges or obtain driver’s licenses.

This election cycle, South Carolina residents will vote on a constitutional amendment that explicitly bans illegal immigrants from voting, even though they are prohibited from doing so under current state law. Some say the measure was designed to scapegoat the entire immigrant community.

“It definitely makes people more suspicious of the immigrant community, that maybe they’re trying to get away with something,” said Aimee Deverall, an immigration attorney in Beaufort. “This is something that we’re talking about nationally, but I don’t know what statistics are available to support that there’s illegal voting in South Carolina.”

Wilson himself has taken a particularly tough stance on undocumented migrants.

One of his first cases early in his tenure as attorney general was defending a 2011 South Carolina law that required police during traffic stops to require verification of a suspect’s citizenship or immigration status if they had reasonable suspicion that the person was an illegal immigrant.

More recently, Wilson has challenged the federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and earlier this year joined a lawsuit seeking to block DACA recipients’ access to public health care programs. Last month, he celebrated a victory in a federal court that would have barred undocumented immigrants from joining together.

Deverall says that’s part of the problem. While crimes are happening, many of the state’s actions seem to be aimed not at solving problems but at making life harder for people who are pursuing the promise of American prosperity, but because state and federal lawmakers simply can’t.

“It seems to be a distraction from any type of problem solving,” she said. “Unfortunately, there’s no real focus on solutions. It just makes people feel scared.”