On Tuesday, half of America’s governors launched a strike force to control the ongoing border crisis. The American Governor’s Strike Force was modeled after Governor Doug Ducey’s Arizona Border Strike Force, established in 2015.
“If our entire southern border isn’t secure, our nation isn’t secure,” said Ducey. “As dangerous transnational criminal organizations continue to profit from holes in the border and fill our communities with drugs, it’s no coincidence that we’re seeing historic levels of opioid-related deaths.”
Today we are launching the American Governors’ Border Strike Force – a partnership among 26 governors to do what the federal government won’t: secure the southern border.
The American Governor’s Strike Force aims to improve intelligence on state crimes traceable to the border, cybersecurity, as well as tracking of drug trafficking and human smuggling.
The coalition of 26 governors launched the strike force in an effort to precede the Biden administration’s plan to lift Title 42 at the end of May. The policy allows expedited deportation of illegal immigrants from the country. Title 42 came into play in early 2020 under former President Donald Trump through the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) as an effort to control the COVID-19 spread.
As of the latest Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data, there have been nearly 2.6 million encounters/apprehensions on the southern border since President Joe Biden took office. That doesn’t include “getaways,” estimated to be tens to hundreds of thousands of times more.
By comparison, there were over 2.4 million encounters/apprehensions under Trump’s entire tenure.
Following a suspected #vehicle incursion at the border near Douglas, AZ, Tucson Sector agents arrested 17 migrants near an abandoned pickup truck. Based on tire tracks, a second vehicle traveling the same route returned to #Mexico. #GreatWork intercepting the smuggling attempt. pic.twitter.com/Nmf4GOStvY
2021 under Biden didn’t only reflect record highs in illegal immigrant apprehensions and encounters. Last year, transnational criminal organizations brought in around $3 billion from human smuggling. Additionally, fentanyl overdoses accounted for a record high of more than 77 percent of adolescent deaths in Arizona, as well as resulting in the leading cause of death for individuals aged 19 and younger.
🚨Massive fentanyl siezure in southern Arizona The Pima County Sheriff's Department said a female, 47, was stopped with approx 371,000 fentanyl pills/$1.4M in her car. Per DEA 42% of pills tested for fentanyl contain at least 2 mg of fentanyl considered a potentially lethal dose pic.twitter.com/dJnrr1DvtQ
Ducey and Texas Governor Greg Abbott teamed up last December to form the governors’ coalition. The pair recruited 24 other governors: those representing Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
In January, Ducey promised the strike force in his State of the State Address. Ducey characterized the strike force as a solution to the Biden administration’s lack of progress on controlling the border crisis.
“Texas Governor Greg Abbott and I are teaming up to form the American Governors’ Border Strike Force: a commitment between states to do what the Biden administration is unwilling to do: patrol and secure our border,” said Ducey.
Ducey and Abbott’s initiative came after months of negotiations and proposals with the Biden administration to mitigate the crisis. Ducey cataloged those efforts in his latest press release announcing the strike force.
Smugglers will try anything to bring narcotics into our communities.
Nogales Station agents at the I-19 Checkpoint seized methamphetamine and fentanyl from two U.S. citizens traveling on a shuttle bus. @Arizona_DPS responded, and both smugglers face criminal charges. pic.twitter.com/b61XTbhBed
Senators Mark Kelly (D-AZ) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) championed their work to mitigate the border crisis Monday, highlighting several key provisions they secured in Congress’ annual budget bill. Their press release came the same day as the latest data was published by Customs and Border Protection (CBP), reporting nearly 165,000 illegal border crossings in February: the highest number for that month since 2000. The record high complements the record 154,000 illegal crossings in January. Those numbers fall in line with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) prediction at the onset of this year that the border crisis would worsen throughout 2022.
None of their provisions included finishing the border wall. As AZ Free News reported last month, the Arizona legislature passed two separate bills to finish the border wall, allocating hundreds of millions to cover the remaining 17 miles. The House and Senate must consider the bills passed by the other before they will go before the governor.
Additionally, suggestions by Governor Doug Ducey presented in draft legislation for Sinema and Kelly were recognized and ignored in part. Ducey’s legislation called for border wall completion, physical barriers, and virtual surveillance; requirement that asylum seekers who have traveled through another country attempt to claim asylum in that country; requirement for asylum seekers to claim asylum at a port of entry; an increase in immigration judges; additional funding for local law enforcement and humanitarian efforts; and a clear declaration by the federal government that the borders aren’t open for immigration except through a port of entry and legal means.
Sinema and Kelly’s acquisitions that fulfilled Ducey’s requests were additional funding for local law enforcement and humanitarian efforts, as well as border security technology which includes virtual surveillance. In addition to their other border infrastructure investments, Sinema and Kelly secured over $2.3 billion.
Sinema emphasized that the billions would allow not only American citizens to be kept safe, but to ensure that the illegal immigrants receive fair and humane treatment.
“These critical resources will help secure the border through improved technology and additional personnel, manage the flow of migrants to keep Arizona communities safe, and provide Arizona nonprofits and DHS the resources needed to ensure migrants are treated fairly and humanely,” said Sinema.
Kelly alluded that there wasn’t a guarantee that further border crisis-related burdens wouldn’t befall Arizona in the future.
“The crisis at the border continues to put a strain on our communities and law enforcement as they work to maintain a safe and orderly process. It’s critical that we are bringing needed technology, personnel, and other resources to improve border security,” said Kelly. “I’ll keep working with my Republican and Democratic colleagues in the Senate and continue pushing the Biden administration to ensure Arizona does not bear the cost of this crisis.”
From 2000 to 2006, the total number of illegal crossings at all borders hovered around one million. Then, from 2007 to 2011, that number dropped steadily from under 900,000 to 340,000. The number of crossings picked up slightly and fluctuated between 300,000 to 500,000 from 2012 to 2018. A sharp spike of 860,000 occurred in 2019, before petering off to 405,000 in 2020.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
President Joe Biden’s border crisis hasn’t slowed down in the least, as was made apparent by recent evidence that illegal immigrant detention centers continue to be well over their capacity nearly a year after his administration began. Last week, leaked photos given to the Washington Examiner revealed the current state of one Yuma detention center. The pictures depict accommodations akin to those used by the hoards of homeless overcrowding deep blue cities like San Francisco, California, or Seattle, Washington: illegal immigrants huddled under makeshift tarp tents, touching elbows in areas with standing room only, nestled shoulder to shoulder with their belongings along hallways, or packed together on floors to sleep in space blankets.
Insiders involved with the detention center reported that the number of those detained surpassed the space available inside for the nighttime, forcing illegal immigrants to sleep outside under the makeshift tents in the freezing or near-freezing weather outdoors.
Dec. 9: Yuma @MayorNicholls declared a state of emergency after Border Patrol apprehended 6,000 people in 5 days (as many as were intercepted in an avg month over the past 20 years).
Border Patrol's 3 holding stations throughout Yuma are overflowing, as well as its outdoor tent. pic.twitter.com/LdD8YKFsz1
The insiders further informed the Washington Examiner that Biden’s border crisis upended the normal ebb and flow of illegal immigration: the usual easing up of illegal crossings around the holidays didn’t occur last year.
Border Patrol Yuma Sector union President Rafa Rivera told the news outlet that no CDC guidelines can be followed due to overcrowding.
Former Arizona Supreme Court Justice Andrew Gould explained to AZ Free News that the detention facility numbers seen currently are two to four times normal capacity; under normal circumstances, the sites cost taxpayers about $8 million a month in operational expenses.
Gould added that the overcrowding has minimized some in recent weeks — from around 3,000 to 1,200 thanks to greater efforts by law enforcement to secure the border. Authorities were prompted to take further action as illegal immigrants were trampling the area’s agricultural fields as they traveled. Yuma County serves as one of the nation’s premiere suppliers in winter produce, calling itself the “winter vegetable capital of the world.”
“90 percent of the [winter] produce in the country comes out of Yuma. It’s a critical area for food and food safety and producing food,” said Gould. “The illegal immigrants are basically trampling down crops in fields. Not only are they destroying crops but they’re crops that are highly regulated. Preventing any type of contamination in those fields is important because it puts our food supply at risk.”
Gould also pointed out that many illegal immigrants, especially those from Mexico, don’t have access to good health care. He explained that the detained expose border patrol and any others present to serious disease like tuberculosis, on top of COVID-19. He questioned why the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has focused on all other workplaces, especially throughout the pandemic, but hasn’t intervened with these detention centers.
“Nationwide, OSHA is mandated to protect workplace safety but I haven’t seen anything about OSHA about the workplace conditions of border patrol agents workpace sites,” mused Gould.
It’s not just the temperatures and sanitary issues, especially with the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak, that have caused concern. Illegal Haitian immigrants have become increasingly violent as they continue to be deported back to Haiti, causing fights on the deportation flights or resisting arrest along the border.
Overcrowding in deportation centers shouldn’t come as a surprise, given that the number of encounters experienced over the course of days has equaled or surpassed what authorities would experience in a month or more.
As AZ Free News reported, Yuma Mayor Douglas Nicholls declared a state of emergency early last month after authorities captured the number of illegal immigrants normally apprehended in a month’s time in five days: over 6,000 illegal immigrants. Per Customs and Border Patrol’s (CBP) latest report, over 173,600 illegal immigrants were apprehended in November.
Thousands of illegal immigrants in a matter of days has been more of a regular occurrence rather than an exception to the rule under the Biden Administration. About a week after Nicholls’ emergency declaration, Yuma Sector Chief Patrol Agent Chris Clem announced the encounter of over 2,600 illegal immigrants in one weekend.
#USBP#YumaSector agents encountered more than 2,600 migrants who illegally entered the U.S. from Mexico Friday through this morning. Migrants from more than 30 countries entered the U.S. over the weekend. pic.twitter.com/Sh1d7YuLJT
— Chief Patrol Agent Chris T. Clem (@USBPChiefYUM) December 13, 2021
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
One Arizona sheriff sees too many similarities between U.S. immigration policy at the Southwest border and how the Biden Administration has handled the situation in Afghanistan, and he fears a perfect storm is brewing.
“It’s a mess down here all along the southwest border both on public safety, national security, and humanitarian,” Cochise County Sheriff Dannels told KFYI’s James T. Harris earlier this week. “The willful neglect, the willful avoidance to solve the problem, take responsibly for it, is the same thing he did on the Southwest border that’s now being played in a terrorist country with the Taliban.”
According to Dannels, just under 10,000 undocumented immigrants -what he calls “getaways”- were able to evade capture in July crossing from Mexico into Cochise County. The crisis is more frustrating, he said, because the Biden Administration ended President Donald Trump’s Stay in Mexico policy without having another plan in place.
The policy, Dannels said, worked well and allowed for a controlled situation at the Southwest border. Last month the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the Stay In Mexico policy reinstated despite objections from Biden’s appointees running the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
“It’s amazing that our own Department of Homeland Security is fighting that,” Dannels said of the Stay in Mexico policy. “It’s not like Mexico is fighting that or another private group is fighting that. Our government is fighting that. Which is just a crying shame because the program worked in the past.”
For now, Dannels and his deputies are putting up a valiant stand while trying to respond to the continuous influx of undocumented immigrants and the accompanied increase in crime reports. He also says “it’s truly been beneficial” to have several dozen members of the Arizona National Guard assigned to work with his agency by order of Gov. Doug Ducey.
Dannels is also aware of recent warnings to New Mexico residents about a growing Middle Eastern presence among illegal border crossers. That concern, the sheriff said, has actually been on the radar of law enforcement officials for a while.
He worries a “perfect storm” exists right now with the upcoming 20-year anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001 and the U.S.’s open border philosophy under President Biden. It is a philosophy, Dannels said, that even those in federal leadership positions concede is not working, unless they are “a political puppet.”
And the chances are great that someone intent on doing harm to the United States is going to come through the Southwest border, Dannels said, because the White House has left law enforcement personnel unable to compete against the Cartel.
“Nothing is changing for the good down here,” Dannels said.
