Arizona Border Sheriff On Border Crisis: Biden ‘Owns This,’ ‘We Had It Under Control’ Under Trump

BRIAN KILMEADE, FOX NEWS HOST: While the new administration’s decision to stop border wall construction has forced crews to put down tools, this kills me, and walk away in the middle of work. By the way, this is a wall we already paid for, a decision that one Arizona sheriff says left behind a roadway for smugglers. Sheriff Mark Dannels is in charge of Cochise County, which covers 83 miles of the U.S.-Mexican border. He joins us now. Sheriff, we paid for the wall to be built along with the technology and along with the roads. Now we’re paying to move the wall, store the wall, or destroy the wall. And guess what? The illegals, according to what you’re telling us, are actually using it to get into the country? In what way?

MARK DANNELS, SHERIFF COCHISE COUNTY: Well, good morning, Brian. It’s, it’s a product of politics within policing. And I’ve always said this, they have no business in our business, in the business of policing what we do on this border in our communities. When President Biden rescinded the emergency order on the southwest border, it stopped resources, and it stopped construction on our border.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. It’s opened up the border. It opened up the message that it’s okay to come in this country. This administration owns this decision. And what it’s doing is it’s forcing us back to 2019, where we had the largest what I call crime scene in the country to include the largest humanitarian situation going on.

KILMEADE: So what we’re seeing is stills that you guys sent us. How did you get these pictures? What should everyone at home know about these pictures?

DANNELS: These pictures come off our, we have our own camera system that works [collected] with the CBP. These pictures I’m showing you came off our camera system, where you see the smuggling coming through our deserts. It’s wide open right now. It’s wide open, and with the chaos going on the border based on these administrative decisions, and it just, 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. And this is what we just put together, we had it, we had it under control, this [is] frustrating. And now it’s going back to 2019. It’s frustrating.

KILMEADE: I mean, I don’t want to get you into politics. But we just fired 15,000 people working on a pipeline that had zero impact on the environment. And then he went over to the border, which was working, and blew it up from pure political purposes and made your life miserable and made our country, put our country in greater danger. Keep in mind some of these numbers, and these numbers don’t lie — border encounters in the fiscal year 2021, 71,922 in October, 72,091 in November, 73,000 in December, 78,000 in January, that’s almost 300,000. Now look, in 2014, Vice President Joe Biden said when they were 68,000 border crossings, unaccompanied minors crossing, they said it was a crisis. He called it a tragedy. That was 188 per day. Today, we’re projected to have 117,000 this year. What’s he going to call it then? What changed?

DANNELS: Well, politics changed. Politics changed, ideologies changed. It’s hypocritical, to be honest with you, Brian, what we’ve seen in the past and where we’re at today, it’s very hypocritical by this administration. It goes against the grain of the CDC. I would love to hear Dr. Fauci, who nobody is talking about what’s going on the southwest border, when it comes to the health pandemic in this country. They are not testing them. They’re being released without being tested into communities. And then you look at the public safety aspect of this. It’s upsetting. It’s almost like we’re not part of this country, which is very upsetting.

KILMEADE: Yeah, it’s what’s in the best interest of the country. When’s the last time someone asked you if you were a Democrat or a Republican? It’s nothing to do with it. It is just one’s right and one’s wrong. And you say this Remain in Mexico policy, which has now been blown up. You say that the new proposal by the Mexican leader could bring 600,000 to 800,000 Mexican and Central American illegal immigrants a year coming here.

DANNELS: Yes, [and to] give you an example, Brian, off just our camera system, which is up to 1,000 cameras, we deploy 700 at a time. A year ago today, we were running just on our camera system, 300 to 400 a month. In August, when the politics kicked up, we jumped up to 1,200 a month. In December, it was over 2,500 illegal entries to include over 500 pounds of illicit drugs. I just got the charts [the other day], it’s skyrocketing back to numbers we saw in 2019. The reason we have MPP and these other programs President Trump put in place was because the 2019 caravan and surges. It worked. It’s not working now.