RIGHT SPEAK: Border Sheriff Exposes How Biden Admin Helps Drug Smugglers: Here's What They Don't Want You to Know

Yuma, along with other border counties in Arizona, has begun seeing a surge in immigrants crossing the border. With thousands flooding into the U.S., places like Yuma are suffering as Border Patrol is overwhelmed and local officials and services are stretched thin.

But the influx of immigrants is a nationwide problem and Yuma is just one of the entry points for human and drug trafficking, which is causing a crisis on the border and throughout the whole country.

Sheriff Leon Wilmot of Yuma County spoke with The Western Journal to describe the chaotic situation at the border.

At the end of the year, Mexico began emptying shelters and the Migrant Protection Protocols (also known as “Remain in Mexico” from the Trump administration) were upheld.

This caused a rush at the border.

Wilmot said that typically Border Patrol agents in Yuma deal with about 700 to 800 immigrants a day. But those numbers shot up to over 1,100, even up to 1,300 individuals crossing the border each day.

This overwhelmed Border Patrol and took agents off the border roads in order to try to process those entering. The problem is that Border Patrol was barely able to handle the normal numbers of immigrants crossing the border, let alone an influx.

The surge also strained local resources in Yuma. Immigrants flooded the one hospital in town, called ambulances to pick them up at the border and even walked into Wilmot’s jail to try to get processed.

Under current policies, Wilmot sees no end in sight to this influx.

“[F]rom talking with our federal partners on the ground, they don’t see this stopping or slowing down at all. It’s just increasing,” he said.

But despite this apparent crisis, Homeland Security has not seemed to take any note of the issues at the Mexico border with Yuma.

Wilmot said that Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas was actually on the way to San Diego near the end of the year for a cybercrime meeting and didn’t bother to stop in Arizona, despite “knowing full well that there is a crisis down here on the border to the point where the mayor had to declare an emergency because it’s impacting local resources.”

Homeland Security’s neglect is particularly concerning since it is the cartels in Mexico that are actively manipulating a large part of the immigration surge. They are trafficking both humans and drugs over the border.

“That’s all orchestrated by the cartels. Every bit of what you see is orchestrated by the cartels. Every person that you’ve seen that’s crossed, those numbers are paying anywhere from $6,000 to $20,000 to be smuggled across,” Wilmot said. “Just for Yuma alone, the cartels are making about $15 million a week, armed individuals being smuggled across. They control every bit, every mile of this border, so they dictate what crosses and where.”

Wilmot said the cartels tie up Border Patrol and local law enforcement resources with a surge of immigrants and then smuggle humans and narcotics across the border unnoticed. Fentanyl, methamphetamine, heroin and cocaine are coming into the states in huge quantities.