DES MOINES, Iowa — In a state over one thousand miles away from the southern border with Mexico, immigration and the influx of immigrants became a top issue for GOP voters who participated in the Iowa caucuses on Monday, surpassing concerns about the economy. 

“The border is hitting our economy in every way,” said Patricia Lage, a voter from Spring Hill, Iowa, who served as a caucus captain for former President Donald Trump on Monday. 

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Lage acknowledged that while Iowa is far geographically from the southern border and she doesn’t see a ton of impact of the border crisis in the state, the issue is still a top concern for her.

“They are coming in and costing us money. … They shut down a school in New York to house these people and kick the kids out. That’s ridiculous,” she added.

Other voters pointed to the border issues as to why some Iowa communities have struggled with addiction and overdose deaths.

Jodi McGonigle, a voter from Ames, said the border was a top issue for her after a friend’s son died from drugs laced with fentanyl. 

“It’s sadly a big issue here, and I appreciate DeSantis was addressing the fentanyl issue,” McGonigle said, who decided to caucus for the Florida governor. “Keeping the borders safe will ultimately help with this.”

About 4 in 10 Iowa Republicans participating in the caucus chose immigration as the most important issue facing the country, according to results from AP VoteCast. There were other indications the issue was critical to Iowa Republicans. According to the Iowa poll in November, 80% of GOP caucusgoers said “immigration and border security” were “extremely important” and ranked second to the economy and inflation, with 81% of GOP caucusgoers calling it “extremely important.”

“I’m surprised that it was the No. 1 issue for people. Obviously it’s an issue, but the No. 1 issue? I’m kind of shocked by that,” said Will Rogers, the former Polk County GOP County chairman, on Tuesday.

Rogers said he thought the economy and inflation would be an issue that would be far ahead of immigration.

“We see it on the news every day, but I don’t know how many people in Iowa really experience immigration issues in their life,” Rogers said. “I’m not saying it shouldn’t be a priority issue for people in Washington, D.C., as well. I mean, it’s a mess. But, I was shocked to see it was a top motivator for people here.” 

U.S. immigration officials came across a staggering 300,000 immigrants at the southern border in December, making it the highest number of people encountered in a single month in history. Additionally, thousands of immigrants have been bused from border states like Texas and Arizona to Democratic-controlled cities like New York, Washington, D.C., and Chicago. 

The influx of immigrants at the southern border has dominated the headlines for months, with the Republican candidates making the issue front and center in their campaigns. 

“As soon as I take the oath of office, I’ll terminate every open border policy of the Biden administration and begin the largest deportation operation in American history,” Trump said, speaking to supporters at a rally in Indianola on Sunday.

In the final days before the caucuses, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) criticized Senate Republicans seeking to secure a deal on border security and aid for Ukraine and Israel, accusing those lawmakers of “basically caving on everything to the Democrats.”

“I’m sick of Republicans, you see what they are doing right now in Washington with these senators doing some border agreement, which is basically caving on everything to the Democrats,” DeSantis said Saturday during an event at his campaign offices in West Des Moines.

For weeks, the Biden administration and a bipartisan group of lawmakers in the Senate have been trying to strike a deal on legislation that could reduce the growing number of unlawful border crossings. Talks have been going on for weeks, and the details are still unclear, but negotiations have been focused on tightening U.S. asylum laws.

Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley also made her immigration-related accomplishments and proposals a centerpiece of her campaign. She continues to tout a law she signed into law as governor in South Carolina that required all businesses to check the immigration status of new hires through a federal online database called E-Verify. The state also imposed a law that requires proof of U.S. citizenship for a person caught committing a crime or pulled over in a car by law enforcement. The Department of Justice sued the state over the law. 

“When I was governor in South Carolina, we passed one of the toughest illegal immigration laws in the country. Obama sued me over it,” Haley said at a campaign stop in Ankeny last week. “We will take what we did in South Carolina and go national with it.”

Kari Lake, a candidate running for Senate in the border state of Arizona, who also is a top surrogate for Trump, said she was not surprised to see immigration becoming a dominant issue for voters, even those located far from the border. Lake, a former local news anchor in Arizona, spoke about her experience covering immigration as a former journalist. 

“Every state is a border state now, sadly. You know why — Joe Biden on day one pulled back an incredibly effective border policy that Donald J. Trump put into place,” Lake said in response to a question to the Washington Examiner, alluding to Biden’s decision to wind down “Remain in Mexico,” a Trump administration policy that forced tens of thousands of asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico while immigration courts considered their cases. 

“I was an honest journalist for 30 years, 27 of which I spent in Arizona, and I saw politicians come and go and talk about the border and do nothing. The first president who did something, who secured that border, was Donald Trump,” Lake said. 

The focus on immigration has already been in the spotlight in New Hampshire. Trump’s campaign released an ad in New Hampshire last week casting Haley as weak on immigration. The spot attempts to lump her views on immigration with Biden’s, arguing both did not support Trump’s “border wall” or “visitor ban from terrorist nations.”

​At campaign events across Iowa, Haley addressed the attack ad.

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“So, Trump now has an ad that says me and Joe Biden never wanted to build a wall and secure our border. You know what I actually said,” Haley asked rhetorically during a campaign stop in Bettendorf, Iowa, last week. “You can’t just build a wall; you’ve got to do more than that, and I listed all of those things you have to do in addition to building the wall.”

“So, they’re taking little pieces and putting it together to make it look like what they want you to see,” she added.