Chris Hansen: Migrant crime 'is not a hoax'
'Takedown' host Chris Hansen warns of the dangers of migrant crime, recounts following Florida sting operation on 'Jesse Watters Primetime.'
"Takedown" host Chris Hansen — also known for his longtime show "To Catch a Predator," which followed police sting operations targeting pedophiles — said his latest project led him to encounter migrants who were soliciting women for sex and others being solicited themselves.
Hansen told Fox News the idea of "migrant crime" is "not a hoax," but becoming a real problem in some quarters where it has led to alleged criminal sex rings, after MSNBC's Rachel Maddow and Jen Psaki mocked the issue being the top concern for voters in Virginia.
Maddow joked it does have a "very contested" border with West Virginia, which led Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.V., and Gov. Jim Justice to denounce the pundits as "liberal elites" who insult Mountaineers and all concerned Americans.
Hansen said the issue is a serious one for many states far-flung from the border, including Florida, where he recently spent a week undercover with Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd and his deputies during a child predation and human-trafficking probe.
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"On the human-trafficking side, [there were] 228 people arrested in a week — 10% were illegal immigrant citizens from other countries," he said.
When asked if those encountered were being trafficked or conducting the trafficking, Hansen replied: "It's both."
"In one case… which you'll see this coming up on True Blue [network], we have two women coming into a hotel room, all on hidden camera being recorded. They cut a deal [for] sex with the undercover," he said on "Jesse Watters Primetime."
"Two women — $1,300. And later, after the arrest, they told investigators they had to earn $3,000 a week to pay the people who smuggle them into this country."
Watters summarized Hansen's operation as one in which people become "indebted to the cartels that traffic them, and they pay off that debt through a life of crime in the United States."
Hansen said in the Polk County sting, three Venezuelan nationals were arrested.
"One man, who was pimping these women out, and the two victims of human trafficking," he said.
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Hansen took issue with claims from the left that crime is down in migrant epicenters, saying that might be true for the overall crime rate, but cited cases of "horrific crimes," like the alleged murder of Laken Riley by a Venezuelan migrant in Georgia.
Of the estimated 79,000 illegal immigrants who came into the United States with criminal histories, each on average has committed at least four additional crimes, Hansen claimed.
"Suddenly 79,000 turns into 300,000," Hansen said, adding agencies like the Immigration & Naturalization Service and the Border Patrol want to work to quash the crisis, but policies like those in sanctuary cities prevent them from doing so.
He also recounted speaking with a sheriff of an Arizona border county who claimed as many as 250 children who crossed the border there have become unaccounted for in the nation's interior.
Watters further cited a recent CBS News interview with former Biden-era Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz, who said he has never had a conversation on-the-job with his ultimate boss.
"I was the chief of the Border Patrol. I commanded 21,000 people. That's a problem," Ortiz said last month.
Judd, the sheriff whose department Hansen shadowed, had commenced "Operation March Sadness" on Feb. 22, and reportedly arrested 21 illegal immigrants among the 228 netted in the human-trafficking crackdown.
"We have a crisis at the border, and because of the crisis at the border, we have people that are victimizing illegal folks, forcing them into the sex trade," Judd said, saying that no one in power pays proper attention to the crisis.
Judd said President Biden's Homeland Security department gave migrants identification and paperwork allowing them to fly on the taxpayer's dime.
"You know how Southwest will let your bags fly free? The federal government will let your illegal immigrants fly free," he said.
FOX News Digital's Louis Casiano Jr. contributed to this report.
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