Texas State Senator Dan Patrick (R-Houston) reported that the influx of illegal immigrants into Texas outpaces the state’s birth rate in an appearance on Monday’s broadcast of The Laura Ingraham Show.

“We’ve been averaging for the last year apprehending between six and ten thousand people a week… if we apprehend eight or nine thousand a week, that’s more people than are born in Texas each week.” He added, “we think we catch one out of every five. That means twenty-five or thirty thousand are crossing the border, that we don’t catch.” And “just two weeks ago, we apprehended almost 10,000 people crossing the border, in one week.”

He stated that from 2008-2012, Texas jailed 143,000 people identified as being in the state illegally. Those individuals were charged with 447,000 crimes, “including over 5,000 rapes and 2,000 murders.” Also, the state has “100,000 gang members here illegally,” according to Patrick’s estimates.

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