GILA BEND, Arizona — Rep. Andy Biggs on Monday urged Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and the Border Patrol to notify local officials before releasing hundreds of illegal immigrants into tiny border towns that lack the resources to help them.
Biggs, an Arizona Republican, says he “remains concerned” about the decision to release so many lawbreakers into unsuspecting towns and slammed Homeland Security and the Border Patrol for failing to provide members of Congress with answers to basic questions about the unplanned desert drop-offs.
“I request that DHS refrain from releasing aliens into communities without first coordinating with local elected officials and stop releasing aliens without NTAs (Notices to Appear),” he wrote in a letter sent to Mayorkas, Troy Miller, the acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, and John Modlin, the head of the Border Patrol’s Tucson sector.
The United States is facing the biggest surge of migrants at its southwestern border in 20 years. The increase has put a tremendous burden on border towns ill-equipped to deal with the rush of people.
“This Administration can’t acknowledge the border crisis they created, but expect surrounding border communities to take care of the overflow of illegal aliens that are coming in the name of President Biden,” Biggs told the Washington Examiner. “DHS should not be shifting the consequences of their horrible policy choices to our communities who don’t have the resources to care for illegal aliens, and I’m working to stop it.”
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Biggs said he was also concerned about future releases and said DHS has yet to explain its legal authority for releasing so many people without notices to appear in court.
Last week, Biggs sent a separate letter to Mayorkas, urging him to refer to the situation at the border as a “crisis” after the DHS chief asked his staff for volunteers to help with the growing surge.
“Given your recent plea for volunteers from throughout the Department of Homeland Security to support Customs and Border Protection’s work at the border, I request that you publicly declare that the situation at the southern border is a crisis,” Biggs wrote.
The deteriorating situation is one of President Joe Biden’s biggest challenges as residents and officials in the towns dotted along the border grow frustrated by the pace of progress.
Officials here in Gila Bend were told that the drop-offs would increase in pace, as many as two per week, indefinitely. That kind of foot traffic is likely to inundate the community of less than 2,000 residents that quite simply lacks the resources to help them.
“To drop people in basically the middle of nowhere, it’s 30 miles to the next type of town, and that’s 30 miles of open desert,” Gila Bend Mayor Chris Riggs said. “So, especially come July and August, we’re going to be finding bodies.”
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The summers in Gila Bend are sweltering, and temperatures can run anywhere from 107 degrees to 120 degrees. The landscape is unforgiving.
There are no hospitals or shelters. There are no designated spots where released families can go, nor is there enough money to build one. The ratio of open businesses to boarded-up ones is alarming.
The entire town’s operations are managed by five people. The mayor won’t be in his office all this week because he’s at his “regular job.” In fact, all five council members are indisposed.
“They don’t get paid for being here,” the woman who answered the phone Monday in the mayor’s office told the Washington Examiner.
The last 16-person group that was dumped in Gila Bend included five families from Venezuela and one from Chile. There were small children with them, including one who thought she was in Delaware and about to be reunited with her mother.
“They had no idea why they were being dumped,” Riggs said last week. “Literally, they’d be sleeping at the park, and I’m not going to do that to little children.”
Riggs declared a state of emergency last week in hopes of drawing attention to the problem and getting the money and resources needed to handle the influx.
Even hard-line immigration critics such as Arizona native Tim Micklin say it’s tough not to be swayed by the children caught up in the crisis but believe what the Biden administration is doing is morally bankrupt and illegal.
“Where do they go? We don’t have the resources to take care of them. Who is going to take care of them?” he told the Washington Examiner. “They can’t take care of our own natives here.”
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Calls to the Border Patrol and DHS for comment were not immediately returned.
