- April 23, 2024
-
-
Loading
Loading
by: Rick Staly
Flagler County Sheriff
What happens at the border impacts every community in America, with drug addiction, overdoses and deaths, strains on community social services, health and education systems, law enforcement, court systems, county jails, state prisons and crime rates. It doesn’t matter if you are 1,300 miles away like Flagler County or living in the Rio Grande Valley at the Mexican border, you are being affected and paying for what happens or not happens at the border.
This is not a Republican, Democratic or Independent issue. It is an American crisis, and the border is coming to you, whether you like it or not.
Myself and four other Florida sheriffs and a police chief joined Florida Congresswoman Kat Cammack on a fact-finding mission to ground zero along the Texas-Mexico southern border in McAllen, Texas and other border towns such as Roma, Texas, earlier this month. This area is ground-zero for human and drug smuggling in America.
Based on intelligence reports I have received as sheriff, we know that fentanyl, heroin and methamphetamine invading Flagler County and other communities across the nation is coming from Mexico.
On our visit, we were briefed by many organizations, including ICE/Homeland Security Investigations. They showed us videos of brutal attacks they intercepted that cartels use to send warnings to “traitors,” such as cutting out a heart from a living person and holding it in the palm of their hand as it still beats before decapitating the person or cutting off a live person’s limbs with a chainsaw. All of this is occurring within 2 miles of the U.S. border.
We then went to a border farm on the Rio Grande River and met the farmers who have farmed this land for generations. We learned from them how people suspected of entering the country illegally cut down their fences, trespass on their property and how they occasionally find a dead person on their land.
When asked about the border wall, the farmers explained that on one hand they support the wall but on the other hand they do not because the wall splits their land, making it harder to farm and irrigate or was built in areas they didn’t feel was needed and no one from the federal government asked for their input.
There is no deterrent for human traffickers along the border. When people enter illegally, non-governmental organizations buy them a bus ticket or airline ticket, give them some cash and send them on their way across America with a notice to appear in court. We, the taxpayers, are paying for this because the NGOs request reimbursement for their costs through FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency).
However, this is not my biggest concern with illegal immigration. The people who cross the border and turn themselves in are just looking for a better life for themselves and their families. My biggest concern is the “got-aways” who are in this country. Got-aways are individuals who enter the country illegally but don’t turn themselves in — some are MS-13 gang members, one of the most vicious gangs in the world. We know they are in our country, but who are they, and where did they go?
Administration policies matter and have significant influence on the security of our country. Today many Customs and Border Patrol agents are assigned to “child care” instead of drug interdiction and catching the dangerous got-aways.
This is a problem of epic proportions and the border is coming to a town near you. That is why local law enforcement must take action to understand the scope and cause of the problem and the influx of people and drugs. It is time that our elected representatives, on both sides of the aisle, fix the broken immigration policy and the real crisis at the border.
As it stands today, we have no functional or secure border, and it is putting every American in the United States at risk. A country without a border is no country.
