Mayor of Yuma, Arizona on border crisis as migrant encounters spike 2,405%
Mayor Douglas Nicholls joined 'America's Newsroom' to discuss the border crisis and how it is affecting Border agents and the department's resources.
We’ve entered a new year, but we are still seeing the old, failed policies along America’s southern border that created one of the worst security crises in our nation’s history.
I and many other attorneys general around the nation are using all the tools we have to protect our communities. But the catastrophe will continue to escalate in 2022.
BORDER PATROL AGENT TARGETED WITH GUNFIRE FROM MEXICO DURING APPREHENSION, SOURCE SAYS
Gaps seen in the Yuma Sector of the U.S.-Mexico border. (Rep. Andy Biggs)
Americans should be greatly alarmed about the man-made disaster that the Biden administration continues to perpetuate at our own southern border. The Biden administration is intentionally ignoring federal laws and thus incentivizing mass illegal immigration into our country.
While there are varying theories about what it may be hoping to achieve, we don’t know for sure. What we do know, is that the United States is being damaged on many fronts by this lawlessness, and all Americans are now facing escalating hazards from illegal drugs and dangerous criminals that are entering our communities.
Right now, we are seeing more illegal and especially dangerous drugs pour into our country than ever before. Since July 2021, Arizona law enforcement alone has indicted 320 individuals in cases involving drug trafficking. Some examples include a case of two men who were arrested after $1.7 million in fentanyl pills were seized during a traffic stop. We had 22 individuals indicted in a Drug Trafficking Ring in northwestern Arizona. We seized approximately 300,000 fentanyl pills, along with firearms, just last month. To put that into perspective, two milligrams of fentanyl can be enough to kill a person.
With this last seizure alone, more than 6 million people could have died. Even more alarming is the realization that these are only the drugs we were able to intercept and seize—what about the drugs we don’t? Those are creeping into our communities and into schools, targeting our loved ones.
While American families are seeing the prices of groceries and gasoline go through the roof, the street cost of drugs like fentanyl and heroin is actually falling with the increase in supply. Often these counterfeit drugs laced with deadly fentanyl appear nearly identical to legitimately prescribed medications. Drug traffickers are buying these pills by the thousands for under two dollars a hit and then reselling the pills to local users for five to 10 dollars each.
It’s clear that there is no financial barrier for most people to acquire the drugs. At this time in southern Arizona, statistics show that children are more likely to die of a drug overdose than any of the other public health and safety crises that we hear far more about on the news.
A U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent monitors detainees at Border Patrol station in McAllen, Texas, July 12, 2019. (REUTERS/Veronica G. Cardenas//File Photo)
Another rarely discussed danger to the homeland from the lawlessness at the border is the flow of hardened criminals, gang members and suspected terrorists coming into our country. We know that they are regularly crossing in and there have been suspected terrorists who have been apprehended by border patrol agents. We know that migrants are not just coming from Mexico but countries around the world.
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It is also clear that this whole crisis is obscenely enriching violent cartels that operate on both sides of the border with near impunity and callous disregard for human lives. What we do not know is the identities of thousands of "gotaways" who illegally cross the border each month, escaping detection.
How many dangerous criminals have already entered our country? With thousands of terrorists recently released from Afghanistan prisons, will some make their way to the U.S.-Mexico border? The potential answers to these questions should chill every American, but the federal government doesn’t seem to care about the grave implications.
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If President Joe Biden has learned anything from the first year of his administration, it should be that it is time to stop listening to whichever bureaucrat is whispering in his ear and confront the real concerns of Americans. There may still be time to avoid unnecessary tragedies at home and preserve countless lives by restoring law and order to our southern border.
It is time for our top federal officials to stop playing politics, honor their oaths of office and the people they have sworn to serve. I truly hope that the Biden Administration’s top New Year’s resolution will be to secure the border and protect Americans. Our citizens deserve nothing less.