Illegal immigrants are surging the U.S.-Mexico border because of President Joe Biden’s “political messaging” that the door is open, according to an Arizona border sheriff.
“It’s because of the messaging, all about the political messaging. I mean, we hear it. You see it,” said Cochise County, Arizona, Sheriff Mark Dannels.
“When the political rhetoric kicked up in August, September, that’s when we started seeing the uptick,” he told Secrets, a reference to the issue in the presidential election that Biden led for most of the fall.
“You look at disasters and lessons in this country, it’s usually politics who screwed it up. And in this case, it happened again,” Dannels told Secrets.
“Sheriffs are committed to talking with our constituents, the American people, about this historic crisis.” https://t.co/rBY7MagwBd
— National Sheriffs’ Association (@NationalSheriff) March 25, 2021
The sheriff, who heads the National Sheriffs’ Association’s Border Security Committee, also said that migrants are coming in big numbers because they see that the administration has withdrawn Border Patrol agents and police equipment from the border.
“In my county alone, we had three secondary checkpoints. They’re all shut down. We had an aerostat for low flying aircraft. That’s taken down. We had a Border Patrol station effective March 28 that is shutting down because they’ve rerouted those agents for other assignments to include child care in for taking care of kids. And so, what we’ve done is we’ve blended immigration with border security, and that security piece is now being rerouted,” said the longtime sheriff.
His comments came about an hour before Biden dismissed suggestions that his promise to end former President Donald Trump’s efforts to tighten immigration lured illegal immigrants into the U.S. in the past two months at a record level.
But that’s not what the immigrants are telling police, said Dannels.
“I mean, it just shows you the change of tide, the change of political landscape, and now, we’re off the charts. I mean, so, there’s not a day that goes by that we’re not dealing with crime that’s connected directly to the border,” he added.
He also confirmed that drug cartels and traffickers are using the crisis to move people and drugs over the border, including in his county.
“Everybody’s focused on the children. Well, let’s focus on what’s getting away that’s coming into this country they’re not catching. That should alarm everybody. And last but not least is when the cartels, these criminal organizations, these enterprises are more organized and disciplined than we are, we’re going to lose. And right now, they’re capitalizing on our chaos and crisis,” said Dannels.
