Jasmine Crockett Swiftly Corrected After Embarrassing Legal Mistake

The fake news on MSNBC went a little too far for some after Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) on Sunday declared that illegal immigrants are not actually criminals.

Crockett, who has recently drawn increased attention for her pugnacious persona as a member of the “Squad,” appeared Saturday on “The Katie Phang Show” where she told the MSNBC host that President Donald Trump and immigration authorities are arresting border crossers without justification.

“It is not a criminal violation to enter the country illegally,” she shouts in a clip circulating on X. “It’s not a criminal… crime! It’s not a crime!”

Crockett stated that the lack of federal laws criminalizing illegal immigration has “frustrated” Trump immigration officials like Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and White House border czar Tom Homan.

“They really want our local law enforcement to go out and round up people when they could be looking out for the murderers and sexual abusers as well as the robbers. They want them to go out and round people up on civil accusations,” she added.

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Commentators were quick to post a “community note” on the video, a feature X owner Elon Musk has implemented allowing for factual corrections of misinformation. The note directed readers to 8 U.S.C. § 1325 which states that “any alien” who enters the U.S. without passing through immigration officers or deliberately misrepresenting facts about their immigration status may “be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than 6 months, or both, and, for a subsequent commission of any such offense, be fined under title 18, or imprisoned not more than 2 years, or both.”

By Monday, the controversial Crockett video has garnered more than 5.5 million views.

Phang, a lawyer, doesn’t appear to disagree with Crockett despite the factual inaccuracy of her statement. Progressives for years have attempted to distinguish illegal immigration from other forms of crime, falsely stating that unlawful entry into the U.S. is only a civil violation.

Homan, President Trump’s top voice on immigration, has made clear that anyone who entered the country illegally has a target on their back.

“There’s consequences [for] entering the country illegally,” he told ABC News’ Martha Raddatz in January. “If we don’t show there’s consequences, you’re never going to fix the border problem.”

More than 11 million individuals are believed to be living in the country illegally, including as many as 1.6 million in Crockett’s home state of Texas, according to a 2022 review by Pew Research. The Lone Star State is believed to be the second most popular destination for illegal immigrants behind California.

Republicans during the Biden-Harris administration accused Democrats of expanding asylum protections in a bid to eventually add illegal immigrants to the voter rolls and secure electoral gains, though the number of such incidents has remained small. More salient is their accusation that former President Joe Biden’s blanket welcoming of immigrants from Haiti, Venezuela, Honduras, and other nations wracked by violence was an over-reliance on executive powers to circumvent the need for congressional action on immigration reform.