Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels is expressing his concerns with President Joe Biden’s approach to border security, telling one national media outlet it “is a bad deal for this country.”
On Inauguration Day, President Joe Biden signed an executive order putting about 85 percent of current deportation orders on hold pending further review. He later put forth other immigration changes, such as loosening COVID-19 restrictions that have severely curtailed travel between the United States and Mexico.
Soon after, Dannels used the airways to voice his opinion on the new White House plan, which he called playing “political theater” with border security while risking the life and safety of Americans.
“Yeah I’m concerned, it’s only going to get worse,” Dannels told radio host James T. Harris on Monday. “Politics does play a role in how the Cartel works and you bet, they are going to flood this border.”
The U.S. / Mexico border stretches nearly 1,950 mile across the southwest, from California to Texas. Of that, 372 miles stretch across Arizona of which 83 miles traverses Cochise County’s southern border.
“I tell you it is troublesome for every American in this country, not just my county, the state of Arizona, but everybody,” Dannels. “I don’t understand when our Congressional leaders, who take an Oath of Office to protect every American, is turning that down saying, ‘it will be okay.’ No, it won’t.”
According to Dannels, from January to September 2019, people from 141 countries breached the southwest border, including more than 1000 plus gang members and 16,000 violent criminals. “That’s just a sample, a taste of why we need a secure border. To tamper with that and put politics into it because you’re trying to fit an ideology, that is scary as heck.”
Dannels was appointed by President Donald Trump to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Advisory Council in September 2018. In early 2020, he testified to the President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice about the international border in Cochise County, which he said was once “the nation’s worst border region for unlawful crossings.”
But collaboration on a local, state, and federal level to secure the border resulted in the area being “the safest and best it’s been in 30 years,” Dannels testified. The sheriff, who is the top lawman for an area covering more land than Rhode Island and Connecticut combined, fears the gains will be lost in the “upsetting” new strategy.
“If we don’t start learning from our history and the lessons we’re going to be in trouble in this country,” the sheriff to Harris, adding there was a “100 percent” improvement in border security under the Trump Administration, in part due to federal policies which controlled the flow of immigrants in the United States.
Dannels also pointed out the federal government has put forth no advisory for dealing with the COVID-19 risk posed by an influx of border crossers. Which is especially concerning in hard hit Cochise County as a few thousand immigrants traveling from Guatemala and Honduras could reach the U.S./Mexico border in mid-February.
“We’re in a world pandemic, we can’t even take care of America,” Dannels said. “We’re talking about trillions of dollars to be spent just to take care of Americans right now and we’re going to open up the borders? Talk about hypocritical.”
