The sheriff for Yuma County, Arizona, applauded Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Thursday for visiting the southern border to see firsthand how the crisis has impacted the community.
“He’s spent more time at the border than our border czar,” Sheriff Leon Wilmot told “America’s Newsroom,” referencing Vice President Kamala Harris.
The Biden White House challenger described the horrific conditions faced by migrants, calling the crisis is “unsustainable.”
“This is not a good thing for our country, it’s not a good thing for these people, and it is unsustainable,” Kennedy said in a video posted alongside the border wall.
“I am here to talk about what we are doing around bringing down the cost to American families and creating jobs,” Harris told local news station KPHO. “Let me say on the border that it is one of our highest priorities to continue to work on making sure that the border is secure and that we also do what is necessary to have a fair and humane system.”
“Frankly, Congress needs to act,” she continued. “We’ve put a historic number of agents on the border. We have upgraded and are in the process of upgrading technology. But Congress needs to act.”
The Yuma border sector saw over 124,000 migrant encounters in FY 2023 (Oct.-April), according to CBP data. Wilmot added there have been 9,000 getaways so far in the same time period.
“He got to see not only the impacts on the resources here and hear about that, but he also got to see the environmental catastrophe that we’re seeing along our river corridor,” Wilmot continued.
“You’ve got pharmaceuticals that are being just dumped on the ground there, dumping their IDs, their passports, all their trash, all that’s down there along our river corridor. And that’s not good for the environment or the wildlife that is down there.”
RFK Jr. told Fox News Digital he will “make the border impervious” if elected president.
“We cannot release people, illegal aliens across the border,” he said.
“But we also need to recognize that this is a humanitarian crisis, and we need to fix the policies that have caused this mass migration, including decades of U.S. foreign policy that have imposed austerity on those governments, neoliberal policies that have encouraged the rise of the Junta military dictatorship that has trained and supported death squads in countries across Central America.”
