Dozens of elected officials have appealed in recent weeks to the Biden Administration to address the crisis along America’s southwest border, where thousands of people are now showing up each week instead of the usual hundreds, with no end in sight.
But on Tuesday, a Cochise County sheriff’s deputy who has his boots in the desert dirt of the county’s 83-mile border with Mexico on a daily basis took to the airways to ask citizens to help deputies, officers, and agents like himself.
“What the biggest help for us would be is community support,” CCSO Sgt. Tim Williams told KFYI’s James T. Harris. “Speak to your representatives, tell them the wall needs to be finished.
Williams is a supervisor with Southeastern Arizona Region Border Enforcement (SABRE) Team, a multi-agency unit run by Cochise County in cooperation with state and federal officials. The team serves as an extra line of defense in the county against illegal immigration, drug smuggling, and sex trafficking activity which make it past Customs & Border Protection and U.S. Border Patrol.
During his interview Tuesday, Williams addressed the increasing number of illegal border crossers the SABRE team is encountering, in addition to thousands of people -many of whom are children- who are surrendering at the border to seek asylum.
Williams, an 18-year CCSO veteran, said that while many of those reaching the United States give themselves up at the border, the team is seeing significant traffic involving people who “are trying to get by without being detected or being put into the system whatsoever.”
They are doing so, Williams explained, by going through mountain ranges and other rough terrain with guides and scouts facilitated by the Cartel. That is where tall border fences, first started by President Barrack Obama and kicked into high gear by President Donald Trump, were supposed to help law enforcement.
But President Joe Biden ordered a 60-day pause to wall construction shortly after taking the Oath of Office in January. The pause technically expired March 21, although as of press time neither the White House nor Homeland Security have announced what happens next.
For Williams, there is only one answer: “We need to make sure the infrastructure that was put in place needs to be finished,” he told Harris, explaining it involves more than just the metal walls.
According to Williams, work along several sections of erected walls is not actually completed yet because the associated waterways to manage runoff from southeast Arizona’s “brutal” monsoon season was not finished when Biden’s order was issued.
“I feel they are going to be taking several miles of the wall out during one monsoon,” Williams said, adding that worksites were abandoned and machinery moved out when construction was halted.
Williams knows what happens next could turn on how the public reacts. Which is why he is speaking out -with permission of Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels- and asking citizens to contact their state and national elected officials to pressure Biden to finish what has been started.
And then, says Williams, “we need support in law enforcement – we need support for what we’re trying to do out here and the mission we’re trying to accomplish.”
