Arizona sheriff blames Biden administration for the ongoing border crisis
Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb on the border crisis ahead of Kamala Harris’ visit to the state
Arizona Sheriff Mark Lamb said the Biden administration wants to "hide the truth from the American people" ahead of VP Kamala Harris' visit to the state where the alleged "border czar" plans to visit a renewable energy project, not the border.
The Pinal County sheriff said on "Fox & Friends" Thursday that the Biden administration refuses to handle the crisis at the southern border and is continually trying "to hide the truth."
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"It's creating a ton of issues for us. Whether it's fentanyl killing American citizens every day, poisoning them, whether it's humans being trafficked into the sex trade or the drug trade here in America. That is what we deal with on a daily basis. And this is caused by Joe Biden's policies and Kamala Harris' lack of czar-ing down at the border, whether in Texas or Arizona," he said.
Furthermore, Lamb said he wished the border policies could return to the Trump era because "that's what worked."
Mesa, Arizona Mayor John Giles said Harris avoiding the border on her trip is "a lost opportunity to… bring attention to the security issues that we're facing."
Giles said on "Fox & Friends First" Thursday that the influx of drugs across the southern border is "absolutely impacting" his city.
"In the last two months, we've recovered over 800,000 fentanyl tablets in Mesa, over 200 pounds of methamphetamine just last month. There's absolutely security issues at the border that we would love for the vice president to bring more attention to and to bring more resources to."
Giles said there is a "crisis at our border" and said when Title 42 is no longer in effect, there will be an "extreme surge" of migrants.
Giles applauded NYC Mayor Eric Adams for speaking out and said "there's blame to be shared all over Washington, D.C."
The Border Patrol union on Tuesday took Vice President Kamala Harris to task for her handling of the border, saying the crisis has only grown worse under her watch.
"If you were given a job 2 years ago with the explicit goal of reducing illegal immigration, and then you sit around and do nothing while illegal immigration explodes to levels never seen before, you should be fired and replaced. Period," the union tweeted, including a picture of the vice president.
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Migrant encounters have topped 200,000 each month for the past nine straight months. For comparison, there were 458,000 migrant encounters in the entirety of fiscal year 2020.
Fiscal year 2021 saw more than 1.7 million, and fiscal year 2022 broke that record with 2.3 million encounters.
Fox News' Bradford Betz contributed to this report.
