My View: The Crisis on our Southern Border - Sheriff Rick Staly
What happens at the border impacts every community in America with drug addiction, overdoses and deaths, strains on community social services, health and education systems, law enforcement, court systems, county jails, state prisons and crime rates. It doesn’t matter if you are 1,300 miles away like Flagler County or living in the Rio Grande Valley at the Mexican border, you are being affected and paying for what happens or not happens at the border. This is not a Republican, Democratic or Independent issue. It is an American crisis and the border is coming to you whether you like it or not.
Myself and four other Florida Sheriff’s and a Police Chief joined Florida Congresswoman Kat Cammack on a factfinding mission to ground zero along the Texas-Mexico southern border in McAllen, Texas and other border towns such as Roma, Texas. This area is ground-zero for human and drug smuggling in America and is known by Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) as the Rio Grande Valley Sector. This is also where 43% of all narcotics are seized by CBP – and they believe they only seize 20% of the narcotics actually being smuggled in to America by Mexican cartels!