AZ Mayor Expresses Outrage as Feds Tell Him Illegal Immigrants Dropped Off in His Community Are His Problem
President Joe Biden’s administration is allowing illegal immigrants to flood the nation — and where to put them all has caused a crisis in one Arizona city.
Mayor Chris Riggs is concerned about his small city of Gila Bend, Arizona, after the federal government advised him it would be shipping an unspecified number of illegal immigrants into his jurisdiction this week.
“We can barely afford to take care of the people that we have here and our community now, and as of this second, the Border Patrol advised us that they’re going to drop people off here and do sort of like: ‘They’re your problem’,” Riggs told host Charles Payne on Fox News’ “Your World” segment on Monday.
Riggs, who is a political independent, worried that the feds had foisted this responsibility on him when “quite frankly, it’s going to cost us tens of thousands of dollars a year to be able just to provide them with a bottle of water and a sandwich when they get dropped off.”
“We just do not have the ability to care for these people.”
He said the government wouldn’t tell him anything useful about how many people to expect or what kind of vetting, if any, was done.
“They can’t give us what background on these people are. They can’t tell us what their health issues are. I’ve got a lot of seniors and elders here between Gila Bend and our San Lucy Village that are very susceptible to COVID,” Riggs said.
He went on to say that people in Gila Bend “have not seen the outbreak” of COVID-19 that some areas in the state have, but that now they’re “going to get punished” by immigration officials’ decisions.
The mayor insisted he asked for “documentation, some kind of documentation” from Washington, but wasn’t given anything whatsoever.
“We are completely in the dark,” Riggs said. “Give us something. We’re still not getting anything. So I mean, we’re really very frustrated with how we’re being treated for a crisis that they started.”
Aside from the influx of illegal immigrants that will now become the mayor’s problem, Riggs also commented that he’s witnessed “drug mules” passing through the nearby Sonoran Desert National Monument.
“It needs to stop. The federal government needs to step up and do their job,” he said.
“They’re the ones who created this problem, they need to fix it.”
Gila Bend is located roughly halfway between Phoenix and Sonoyta, Sonora, Mexico. The town has become one such dumping ground for those allowed into the country while they seek asylum.
Previously, former President Donald Trump kept migrants and asylum seekers in their native countries while they were vetted and processed with the “Remain in Mexico” program, ensuring that these exact problems wouldn’t occur.
By contrast, the Biden administration has done just about all it can to encourage illegal immigration, both in policy and in practice.
Biden has pledged to turn family detention facilities into quick admission points that get illegal immigrants processed and released into the U.S. within 72 hours of arrival, leaving little time for proper health and other assessments.
He sent a clear signal when he suspended deportations on his first full day in office and later when he declared the emergency at the border that allowed Trump to accelerate building the border wall was over.
Besides the economic impact these large groups of poor immigrants have in places like Gila Bend, coronavirus exposure is a very real threat that the party pushing hardest for lockdowns and other measures is now conveniently ignoring.
There’s also the increase in drugs and other crime brought into the country, which is not surprising given they’ve already broken the law by virtue of their arrival.
These are all avoidable problems with border security, but the administration has no intention of doing anything about it because Democrats love illegal immigration.
Democrats need a permanent underclass to ensure their electoral success forever, and a stressed economy allows them to blame capitalism and liberty to implement their radical leftist agenda.
America on the whole is economically prosperous and full of opportunity and liberty for all, so it’s natural that people from all over the world want to be here.
And if they’ve been properly vetted and have something to offer to the nation, there’s nothing wrong with letting them in.
However, dumping large groups of illegal immigrants into cities and towns that are barely scraping by is reckless and unfair to do to the Americans who should be politicians’ primary responsibility.
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