The November election of Donald Trump has given hope to a large number of native residents of a small Indiana town that has been swamped by migrants.
The small southern Indiana town of Seymour finds itself in the midst of Joe Biden’s ongoing border crisis, but resident Dana Clark, 66, was heard at a recent town hall meeting that “Trump brought hope. Day one is going to see the biggest deportation ever.”
Seymour, which is situated about an hour south of Indianapolis, is just one more small town feeling the brunt of Biden’s border failures. Residents began debating the logic of finding hundreds of illegal migrants flooding their area. Sadly, one resident paid for this chaos with his life when James Bradley Castner was killed by a migrant driving illegally without a license.
Even before Castner’s death, the town had already become alarmed at the influx of illegal aliens after town Mayor Matt Nicholson, a Republican who first won in office in 2019 and has since earned two terms, released a plan created by the left-wing Brookings Institution to ramp up the number of migrants in Seymour. It was a 68-page plan that soon sparked fury while the country by and large was suffering from some of the worst effects of Joe Biden’s border crisis.
As the Wall Street Journal, noted, the migrant population had already seen heavy growth in Seymour. In the 1990s, Hispanics only made up a negligible one percent of Seymour’s population. By the year 2000, that rose slightly to five percent. But by 2020, it had soared to 26 percent. And the number has since soared again, with 435 immigration cases filed over the last year alone compared to only 66 cases in all of 2021.
The Brookings Institute proposal — which contained plans to build a large migrant welcoming center in Seymour — brought contentious city hall meetings as residents stormed in to express their alarm. A Facebook group helping to organize the detractors of the plan also brought even more attention to the town’s migrant plight.
Republican state Rep. Jim Lucas, who is from Seymour, told residents that a downtown health clinic had been inundated with migrants and the local school system was also struggling with non-English speaking students. The concern sent at least one of the Facebook organizers to a seat on the City Council as local voters have become more concerned every month.
There have also been fears that Seymour has become a defacto sanctuary city. After officials at the state level announced an investigation into whether Seymour was acting as a sanctuary city, in a meeting in October, Councilmember Drew Storey voiced his concern.
“I’m not okay with us being a sanctuary city. I am not. But I can’t tell you that we are,” Storey said, according to WAVE-TV. “I don’t know that we have the policies that are put into place that support a sanctuary city, but Seymour doesn’t want that.”
For his part, Mayor Nicholson has constantly insisted that while Seymour is a welcoming town for legal migrants, the town has no ordinances or rules that would make it a sanctuary city.
The car accident that took the life of area resident James Bradley Castner only raised the temperature of those supporting mass deportations and opposing any continued influx of migrants.
Castner was killed on his way to work on March 27 when his car was hit by an illegal alien from Guatemala who was driving without a license or insurance. Worse, state prosecutors not only released the migrant, they did not even charge him for Castner’s death.
“It was as if Brad’s life didn’t matter,” a member of Castner’s family told the Versailles Republican in November.
In response, Mike Wright, a Marine Corps veteran and one of the organizers of the Facebook group, helped Castner’s family craft a bill named “Brad’s Law,” that would make it a felony for someone driving without a license to cause injury in a car accident. The bill also requires state prosecutors to maintain statistics tracking noncitizen crime.
Wright touted the bill and explained that “The intent is to establish a better set of tools for our statewide justice system in addressing illegal immigrant crime.”
Seymour is far from the only small town in Indiana suffering with these problems. In October, the small town of Logansport, an hour and a half north of Indianapolis, found itself the destination of thousands of migrants, most from Haiti. The town of 18,000 found itself swamped by people from 28 countries over the last few years, causing problems with housing, schools, health care, and jobs.
Many voters are hoping that Donald Trump will help alleviate these issues. Unfortunately, Indiana is only one of the many small towns in states across the country suffering with similar issues thanks to President Joe Biden’s migrant crisis. And all are praying for relief when Donald Trump finally takes the oath of office next month.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Facebook at: facebook.com/Warner.Todd.Huston, or Truth Social @WarnerToddHuston.
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