Illegal immigrant arrested for stabbing at Missouri laundromat

Police in the St. Louis suburb of O’Fallon have arrested Jose Barrera for stabbing two people at a laundromat.

Barrera attacked the first victim after the pair engaged in a verbal exchange at Highlander Laundry. Using a pocketknife hidden in his sock, Barrera stabbed the first victim in the back, and when the second victim tried to intervene, he 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, Texas, in 2021.” A prosecuting attorney for St. Charles County issued warrants against Barrera for two counts of first-degree assault and two counts of armed criminal action.

This 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.

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.”

Laken Riley’s father said 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.

There are currently 7 million individuals residing in the United States who have entered the country illegally since President Joe Bide reversed Trump-era immigration policies.

–Alan Goforth | Metro Voice