In the midst of the largest immigrant flood on the southern border in recent history and President Joe Biden’s ineptitude in creating and dealing with the situation, some Arizona families are left trying to protect their families even when the federal government refuses to.
Biden’s executive order to halt construction on the Trump administration’s border wall, issued the day he entered office, has left holes between the partially constructed system as wide as three-quarters of a mile, Fox News reported Sunday.
That allows illegal immigrants to not only sneak through under the cover of night but even to simply waltz through the border in broad daylight.
This has left New Mexico cattle rancher Russell Johnson with the “horrible feeling” of knowing his family and property are now considered a “funneling point” for illegal immigrants, many of whom are dangerous. According to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement’s 2020 fiscal year report, 64 percent of 185,884 immigrants removed had criminal convictions or pending criminal charges. Johnson’s concerns aren’t rooted in hatred or senseless fear; his family and his ranch are under a genuine threat.
“This gap is right south of my house,” he told Fox News’ Jesse Watters on Sunday.”All of this stuff is coming right by my house. My family’s exposed to it on a daily basis.”
Johnson explained the precautions he takes to safeguard his property from criminals, saying he’s almost forced to utilize his Second Amendment rights, traveling around his 100-year-old property armed just for “some sense of security.”
Biden, caught up in virtue signaling, has left entire families exposed to potential danger in one of his first actions as president, and in a year shaping up to have the largest influx of illegal immigrants the country has seen in years.
According to Customs and Border Protection, in February alone, more than 100,000 illegal immigrants were encountered along the southern border, contributing massively to the imposing total of more than 296,000 immigrant encounters in the first four months of the fiscal year.
John Modlin, who is in charge of Border Patrol’s Tuscon, Arizona, sector, said on Sinclair’s “Full Measure with Sheryl Attkisson” March 7 that “if the flow continues at the rate it is here, by the end of this fiscal year, we will have surpassed ’18, ’19 and ’20, all combined.”
Johnson said cellphone communication is nonexistent in the region where his ranch is located, so he doesn’t have the ability to quickly contact emergency services. With his stop-work order, Biden has essentially reverted much of America’s border to the Wild West, leaving Johnson and other property owners to fend for themselves.
According to the rancher, with law enforcement resources stretched thin due to the migrant flood, Border Patrol agents are forced to stay “three or four” miles north of the border, where they attempt to apprehend illegal immigrants. Meanwhile, inside of those three miles, immigrants are “terrorizing” Johnson’s ranch, he told Watters.
Johnson said Biden should “do the right thing” and allow the border wall system to be constructed. The rancher also explained to viewers that the wall system isn’t just a physical barrier but a “total package,” saying, “There will be new, all-weather access roads, sensor packages, lighting [and] integrated camera towers.”
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Some of those access roads had been built before Biden entered office, so the end of construction of the wall has given some illegal immigrants the ability to establish black market networks along parts of the border, as Sheriff Mark Dannels of Cochise County said in an interview earlier this month.
In contrast to the protection that could have continued to multiply simply through the construction of the wall system, Biden stripped away any sense of security a border community might have had with just a physical barrier. The Department of Homeland Security reported in an October news release that the border wall system, even while under construction, was effective.
Even with just 386 miles of the system fully constructed, multiple areas saw apprehensions plummet even before the coronavirus pandemic began. In the 2020 fiscal year, the Yuma, Arizona sector saw an 87 percent decrease in illegal entries months before the pandemic.
Instead of lit roads and camera systems, or even physical protection, most border communities will, like Johnson’s family, be forced to travel their neighborhoods armed just to protect themselves.
Johnson isn’t alone, as other ranchers and border communities are beginning to become overwhelmed with illegal immigration. John Ladd, a Cochise County rancher, said last week that the Biden administration is “busing [immigrants] into our towns and dumping them off. They’re not giving them bus tickets. They’re just leaving them there.”
Thankfully, while the Border Patrol is overextended, the Constitution allows these communities to protect themselves while the government is unable.
Biden has thrown both law enforcement and his own constituents under the bus through immigration policies focused more on perceived diversity and attempted moral grandstanding than actual security and sensible reform.
His campaign website even made this clear. His immigration plan throughout the 2020 election was titled “The Biden Plan for Securing Our Values as a Nation of Immigrants.”
While law enforcement stumbles along the border facing an overwhelming influx of immigrants without the infrastructure to provide stability, Johnson’s family and others have been left in the dust — forgotten, unguarded and under threat.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
