An Arizona sheriff is calling out the Biden administration for politicizing law enforcement by halting the border wall construction, a decision he says puts American communities in danger.
Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels told Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” Friday that President Joe Biden’s executive order ending the border wall construction is “a product of politics within policing.”
“When President Biden rescinded the emergency order on the Southwest border, it stopped resources and stopped construction on our border. As a result of that, one area where the fence is not complete we get five or six groups a day coming across there,” Dannels said.
On his first day in office, President Biden issued an executive order terminating former President Donald Trump’s declaration of a national emergency at the southern border and defunding construction of the border wall, directing those taxpayer funds elsewhere. Biden called the border wall a “waste of money” and “not a serious policy solution.”
But Dannels says in Cochise County, which contains 83 miles of border wall, the end of wall construction has created an opportunity for criminal cartels to enter the United States.
“This administration owns this decision,” Dannels said.
The sheriff shared pictures taken at the border in his county that show migrants traveling to the United States, including heavily armed drug cartel smugglers.
“It’s wide open right now,” Dannels told host Brian Kilmeade. “It’s wide open and with the chaos going on at the border based on these administrative decisions — We saw this in 2019, Brian, where 141 countries breached our southwest border in the first nine months, over 1,000 gang members, 822 assaults on agents, 271 deaths on our border. This is a crime scene.”
“We had it under control and now it’s going back to 2019. It’s frustrating.”
Since Biden reversed Trump’s policies a humanitarian crisis has developed along the southern border, even if the White House refuses to label it as such. The federal government is taking custody of an average 321 migrant children per day, according to leaked HHS documents reported by Axios. Shelter occupancy is at 94% capacity and is expected to fill up by the end of the month. The Department of Health and Human Services has told the White House it will need a facility with 20,000-bed capacity to humanely give shelter to all of these unaccompanied minors.
Drug cartels, human traffickers, and smugglers have taken advantage of the chaos at the border, creating an entire black market industry of smuggling children and adults to the U.S. and exacting payments from and otherwise abusing the desperate migrants, who come from all over the world. Violence is spilling into the United States and communities at the border are telling horror stories of shootings, car chases, and other crimes conducted by international cartels.
Dannels also pointed out there are health concerns as well because of the pandemic.
“Nobody is talking about what’s going on at the southwest border when it comes to the health pandemic in this country. They are not testing them, they are being released without being tested into communities. And then you look at the public safety aspect of this it’s upsetting,” he said.
“It’s almost like we’re not part of this country.”
