Arizona Farmers Say Illegal Alien Traffic Through Fields Contaminates Crops and Threatens Food Security

Arizona farmers are warning that illegal alien traffic through farmland is contaminating crops and threatening the nation’s food security.

The border crisis is putting the nation’s food security in danger, two Arizona farmers with fields near the southern border told Fox News in an exclusive.

Arizonans had been promised earlier this month by President Joe Biden that he would enforce stricter immigration laws in the lead up to his recent visit at the U.S.-Mexico Border. He did so after ordering Doug Ducey, the former governor of Arizona, to remove a wall that was built by state authorities.

“There’s obviously a food safety concern, because our fields are monitored and audited and tested for different pathogens,” Fox News spoke with Alex Muller from the Pasquinelli Produce Company.

Muller’s farmland is right on the U.S.-Mexico border, and he has complained that the unfinished border wall begun under former President Donald Trump and canceled under Biden in 2021 has allowed a migrant influx that jeopardizes food safety.

Ducey ordered the construction of the temporary container wall last August to plug the holes in the unfinished wall, but then agreed to remove it in January as a result of a federal lawsuit brought by the White House.

According to the settlement reached with the administration, Arizonan authorities will need to collaborate with U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials (CBP) in order to protect their residents and property.

“If there’s somebody that walks into our field and then we don’t know about why we put up flags and kind of mark it out and we don’t harvest that.”

“That hits the bottom line,” Muller. “It’s not sustainable. It’s not good for the country.”

Yuma, Arizona, is the largest agricultural producer of leafy green vegetables in the country during the winter, and provides about 90 percent of the nation’s supply of romaine and iceberg lettuce, according to the Department of Agriculture.

The region produces approximately nine billion lettuce servings annually. However, local farmers are concerned that they will lose their crops as Washington allows illegals to continue to trample on their produce through gaps in its unfinished border wall.

According to CBP, Yuma migrant crossings rose by 171 percent between 2021-2022. This forced many farmers to employ private security armed with guns. reported Fox News.

Fox News also reported Federal officials have recorded that over four million illegal aliens tried to cross the southern border in the past year.

Around one million illegal aliens have crossed Arizona’s southern border in the past year, with another nearly 600,000 evading the U.S. Border Patrol.

Crossings of the border could be dangerous “easily” approach 12 million during by the end of Biden’s first term, American Enterprise Institute scholar Mark Perry told the Daily Caller News Foundation in December.

Arizona Agriculture Gets a Flood of Illegals Trampling on Crops

“We’ve gotten a fair amount of traffic through and around our fields and through the whole entire Yuma Valley,” Fox News interviewed Hank Auza, an agricultural worker from the area. He said that his properties covered several thousand acres, with fields close to Morelos Dam. This is where the wall has major gaps.

“Where the gaps are opens up to more farm ground for them to walk across,” Auza: “we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars just on our farm for food safety.”

Auza stated that a neighboring farmer lost almost $100,000 in crops when a few migrants hid on his land for a week.

“Now you start failing food safety audits, and there is no insurance in the produce business … so you eat that,” Auza was added.

His neighbor said that he couldn’t harvest the affected crops because they could be contaminated by illegal aliens. This could result in foodborne disease.

“This is the largest humanitarian disaster we’ve had in this country,” Auza stated that “and part of the country is happy that it’s happening. I don’t get why.”

Yuma’s agricultural production is vital to this country, Muller told Fox News. “This is produce that we’re growing for the whole country, and it should be protected,” Muller.

He appealed for the Biden administration’s help to close the gap in the border wall, and enforce stricter immigration policies.

The CBP announced on Jan. 6 That it would finish construction on the Yuma border wall to close the holes this month.

Bryan S. Jung is a New York City resident and native. He has a background both in politics and in the legal sector. He graduated from Binghamton University.

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