From fighting crime and backstopping federal agencies at the border, sheriffs and police are ready to join the new Trump team to improve safety in the United States.

What’s more, they are eager to end the four years of exile under the Biden administration.

“I think the country is more than ready for a reversion,” said Jonathan Thompson, the executive director and CEO of the National Sheriffs’ Association.

“The good news for us is that he will talk to us. He will talk and he’ll meet with us,” Thompson said of President-elect Donald Trump in an interview. And Trump is already proving that by including in his Inaugural Parade first responders from Butler, Pennsylvania, where he was nearly assassinated last summer.

While that sounds like common sense, the group that represents 3,081 sheriffs who are on the front lines fighting the national crises of illegal immigration, drug trafficking, and violent crime has been elbowed aside as during the Biden years, said Thompson.

“It’s literally like going from a dark, cold storage room with air on full blast to a room that’s wide open with opportunities and that’s welcoming,” said Thompson, whose group is already meeting with the Trump transition team.

“We’ve tried to meet with the current administration, the president, to no avail, no response, no coverage, no call,” said Thompson, who is retiring at the end of 2025 after 11 years heading the influential group. “Law enforcement writ large, I think, and especially sheriffs have been really rendered third-class citizens” by the Biden administration, he added.

While law enforcement has relations with the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security, Thompson said communicating with the president is important.

“To be candid, the decisions are made by the president, the policy decisions are made by the president, and quite honestly we need to be able to weigh in. I mean, I think that’s kind of a moral obligation to listen to your elected, your co-elected leaders, and that’s what we have not had,” he added.

When Trump was president, that wasn’t an issue. In fact, the National Sheriffs’ Association was among the first groups Trump met with at the White House in 2017. And Trump often met with members of the association.

Thompson said the National Sheriffs’ Association is “working pretty closely” with the Trump teams at the DOJ and DHS on issues ranging from crime to immigration. He expects the group to play a big role and have a significant partnership with the federal government in those areas, as it did during the first Trump term.

“To a person they’ve said, ‘We’re gonna start with you guys and see what you have to help us with and what you need to help us with.’ And that’s an entirely different dialog. Somebody comes in and says, ‘Hey, I need another five people on my defensive line. Do you have two that you could share?’ That’s what is expected,” said Thompson.

The sheriffs are also working with the administration to fine-tune their policies and communications, especially on immigration and deportations, so that law enforcement and the public understand exactly what the goals and procedures are.

Take the president’s call to deport criminal illegal migrants. Some in the media have wrongly warned of “mass deportations” of tens of millions of migrants. Thompson called that “hyperventilation on the left.”

He explained, “That’s not going to happen. It won’t happen. You know, this is going to be a very methodical, humane, due process-driven undertaking. It has to be. We still have courts and we still have a Constitution, and the Supreme Court has ruled that if you’re in this country and you’re here illegally, you have certain rights.”

Overall, Thompson said that he hopes that Trump can work to restore community and respect in the nation and curb what he dubbed criminal “entitlement” of those who disrespect law enforcement and a common moral code.

SEE THE LATEST POLITICAL NEWS AND BUZZ FROM WASHINGTON SECRETS

“There’s a pall over the society right now where the only thing that matters is what I personally want to do, where I want to go, what I want, when I want it, how I want it. You see every day, whether you’re walking down the street and people just meander into you and don’t apologize. Driving down the freeway, people go past you at 90 miles an hour, cut you off, nearly cause an accident, and when they’re arrested, they shrug their shoulders and say, ‘I guess I was going a little too fast.’ The same thing, you arrest somebody going through the Walgreens, taking the most expensive products off the shelf, and [they] say, ‘It was mine. I just decided I wanted to have it.’ Yeah, that sense of entitlement is dangerous, dangerous,” said Thompson.

“I’m hopeful that the country will kind of take some leads here, and the president can give those moral compass type statements that we’re not entitled, we have to earn what we do and get. We have the best government concept on the planet, flawed as it might be, but you still have rights. But excuse me, you still have obligations as a citizen. Treat people with dignity, treat people with humility,” he added.