While other municipalities around the country were declaring themselves sanctuary cities to protect illegal immigrants from federal authorities, the O’Fallon, Missouri city council voted unanimously in 2011 to become a “Rule of Law” city that would enforce immigration laws.

Since then, the St. Louis suburb – as nearly every burg in America – has essentially become a border town incapable of protecting itself from the tsunami of millions of illegals under President Joe Biden.

Indeed, on Sunday two people in O’Fallon were stabbed in the back, as was the “Rule of Law” city, by an illegal who pulled a knife from his socks during a verbal altercation at a laundromat.

Yet, some on the left want to downplay illegal immigrant crime, even in the wake of the watershed bludgeoning murder of young Georgia jogger Laken Riley by another illegal.

So, is the growing alarm about crimes by illegals being overblown?

“Well, tell that to the parents of Travis Wolfe, whom I visited with,” U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley tells The Heartlander, citing the tragic death of a 12-year-old Missouri boy who died three months after a wrong-way head-on collision in Hazelwood last December – allegedly at the hands of an illegal alien driving 75 mph in a 40-mph zone.

“Tell that to the good Missourians who were attacked and stabbed in O’Fallon, Missouri by an illegal immigrant,” Hawley adds. 

“We’ve got more and more reports all across the state of folks getting attacked by illegal immigrants, having acts of violence committed against them by illegal immigrants. And that’s before we talk about the drugs that are pouring into every single school district in Missouri, across the southern border, run by the cartels. 

“All of us are in danger. No family in the state, sadly, is safe. No school district is exempt. No community is removed from the dangers of illegal immigration and the total chaos – I mean total chaos – that it is forcing on this country. It is time to close that border. We are a sovereign nation. It’s time to close the border and start protecting our people.”

Neither are Missourians’ jobs safe from “the worst of these multinational corporations,” he says, pointing to Tyson’s decision to close a plant in Iowa and two in Missouri, as well as others, while moving to hire illegal immigrants elsewhere.

At least one conservative investment fund group has divested itself from Tyson in anticipation of a consumer backlash against the company.

“Boy, you talk about the worst of these multinational corporations,” Hawley said. “Here’s a corporation that wants to fire Missourians, fire Iowans, but hire illegal immigrants. I mean, literally, they’re out there boasting about the fact that they employ illegal asylum seekers.

“And they’re going to hire them – and pay them, of course, less than they pay Americans – while they’re also going to put child labor in their factories. They have been discovered to have child labor illegally in their factories, and yet they’re firing thousands of Missourians and Iowans, and trying to bankrupt whole communities.  

“It’s just unbelievable. And by the way, I don’t buy the line that, oh, they just don’t have the money for it. If they’ve got the money to pay illegals, they can pay Americans, they can keep the jobs in Missouri. I hope they’re investigated for all of these violations, including antitrust violations, because this has got to stop.”

Meanwhile, Hawley, who has repeatedly warned parents that they and their children aren’t protected from Chinese Communist Party spying on TikTok, continues to lead efforts to force its Chinese owner, with ties to the CCP, to sell the video-sharing app or be banned in the U.S. Hawley has put forth his own effort to do so, but is also supporting a similar bill recently passed by the House.

“I think it’s time to ban TikTok,” he said. “We don’t allow China to own our farmland – or we shouldn’t. We don’t allow them to own factories – or we shouldn’t. We shouldn’t allow them to own social media.”

Some conservatives worry the House bill opens a Pandora’s box for further government meddling, or perhaps even deplatforming, of U.S.-based social media companies.

True?

“No, it’s not true,” Hawley says. “The House bill, it specifically says that the platform has to be controlled by a foreign government, hostile foreign power, and it says who: it’s got to be China, North Korea, Russia, basically. And then it uses the definition of control that’s already in the law. Basically, the only entity that currently qualifies for that is TikTok.  

“Let’s just imagine that Joe Biden somehow manages to get reelected – let’s pray not, but let’s say that he did, nightmare scenario – and let’s say then that he decided ‘I want to shut down X (Twitter). I don’t like Elon Musk. I want to shut it down.’ He would have to issue a formal finding setting out all of the national security findings about how X is controlled by one of those countries I just mentioned. He’d have to give it to Congress, and then he’d have to defend it in court. 

“So, listen, this is a TikTok bill.”

Hawley is likewise concerned that Missourians, particularly conservative ones, aren’t protected from U.S. government censorship online.

His concerns were only justified by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s remark during U.S. Supreme Court oral arguments Monday in the Missouri v. Biden case challenging Biden administration censorship of conservatives. Jackson expressed concern that protecting Americans’ First Amendment right to free speech online would “hamstring” the federal government.

Hawley, who assailed Jackson during her 2022 nomination hearing and voted against her appointment, said her comment nonetheless left him aghast.

“I certainly did question her at length about her soft on-crime record,” Hawley said. “This is somebody who, as a judge, repeatedly let out child sex offenders, gave them slaps on the wrist. I voted no for her because I don’t think people with that kind of a record should be on the bench. 

“In terms of her First Amendment comment, she said something to the effect of, ‘Well, the First Amendment might stand in the way of the government being able to do what it wants. It might limit government action.’

“I mean, yeah, exactly. That’s why we have a Constitution. We don’t have a government with unlimited powers, thank goodness. We have a government whose power comes from us, and we need to remind the government that our rights aren’t from the government. Our rights are from God, and we control the government. 

“So, I just think comments like those are really astounding. And it tells you where the left is in America today. The left thinks your rights are from the government and the government can take them back whenever they want. It’s crazy.”