STEVE CORTES: Springfield, Ohio, Small Town America and Kamala’s Open Border

New polls show former President Donald Trump still holds a large lead over Vice President Kamala Harris on border and immigration issues.

In the swing state of North Carolina, an American Greatness poll conducted after the ABC News presidential debate shows Trump with a +3% overall lead among likely voters, and a commanding +10% lead among independents. As for which candidate citizens “trust more to secure the border,” likely voters favor Trump over Harris by a +22% margin, 57-35%.

That lead could grow even further as more Americans learn about the migrant influx that many small and mid-sized cities across America are facing. These cities, many of which are in swing states, are grappling with the intense damage caused by the Biden-Harris administration’s open-border policies.

Most of these cities — like Springfield, Ohio — are working-class communities without the power to sound national alarms about this sudden and chaotic influx of foreigners. Most of them are unable to adapt quickly, and some of them are clearly dangerous.

For comparison, consider the massive national hysteria when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis sent just a few dozen illegal aliens to posh Martha’s Vineyard, a super posh island off the coast of Massachusetts that happens to be the home of former President Barack Obama. Those migrants were flown to mainland Massachusetts by the military.

In an almost unbelievable display of political power that did not happen in my backyard, the Vineyard experts tackled their migrant problem head-on.

But no such luck for places like Springfield, a city of just 60,000 U.S. citizens that has fallen victim to an invasion of 20,000 Haitian migrants. Unlike Martha’s Vineyard, Springfield residents are forced to deal with a massive influx of newcomers who largely don’t speak English, straining local resources, overcrowding public schools, and causing chaos on the streets of a Central American community.

According to a New York Post report, “residents say the biggest problem so far is that wildly driving Haitian migrants — unfamiliar with U.S. driving laws — are turning the streets into combat zones.” One of those reckless Haitian drivers killed a 71-year-old American grandmother, Kathy Heaton, who was picking up her trash from the curb, and the driver was not charged with a crime.

I heard similar stories when I visited Whitewater, Wisconsin, last week. That small town of 15,000 in southern Wisconsin has been flooded with more than 1,000 migrants since Harris became vice president. As I will show in my upcoming documentary about Whitewater’s ordeal, residents complain that the migrants drive erratically, often without licenses and without insurance, causing serious accidents. That local sentiment is also supported by police statistics.

In addition to the dangers on the streets, the influx of foreigners has put enormous pressure on local schools, where 20% of students now do not speak English. In addition, the costs associated with the migrants have left the town in a serious budget deficit.

Not far from Whitewater, in normally quiet small towns in Wisconsin, violent sex crimes have been charged against migrants. In May, a 12-year-old girl was bound, blindfolded and sexually assaulted in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, by a Nicaraguan man who crossed the open Harris border in 2021. Just a few days ago, a Venezuelan migrant was arrested in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, and charged with sexually assaulting a woman and a child. According to local police chief Kyle Teynor, “police had reason to believe he had ties to a transnational criminal organization.”

So even if stories of migrants abusing pets do not pose a widespread risk, the known harm caused by this mass settlement of uncontrolled, expensive migrants should be offensive to every American citizen.

Trump would put an end to this open borders madness.

Steve Cortes is a former senior adviser to President Trump, a former commentator for Fox News and CNN, and president of the League of American Workers, a right-wing populist advocacy group that advocates for workers.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

(Featured Image Media Credit: Screen Capture/CSPAN)