Arizona Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels blasted President Joe Biden’s administration’s lie, silence, and lack of action about the southern border.
Dannels testified at the House Judiciary Committee’s “The Biden Border Crisis” hearing.
National Review has snippets of Dannels’ opening statement:
“I have personally experienced the good, the bad, and the ugly of being a border county. Currently, this is the ugliest I’ve experienced,” Dannels said as part of his prepared remarks.—“Border-related crimes are at an all-time high. Death, murder investigations, aggravated acts against my citizens…and, yes, assault against law enforcement officials,” Dannels said.—“My fellow sheriffs and have tried to partner with this administration to include the President of United States, with high hopes to share a collective message, a collective action plan, support the rule of law, prioritize our southern border and provide updates on community impacts and concerns — with little to no success,” he said. “By allowing our border security mission and immigration laws to be discretionary, these criminal cartels continue to be the true winners.”
Dannels told Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) that statements made by DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayokas declaring the border is secure and closed have never been true and are still not true.
Issa also asked if “border czar” Vice President Kamala Harris’s comment about a secure border is “inaccurate.”
“Yes, it would.”
Dannels also accused the Biden administration of giving him nothing but silence when asking for help:
“We actually have on behalf of the National Sheriffs’ Association … Our National Sheriffs senior leadership has attempted through letters to reach out to President Biden, he’s been invited to our events with major county sheriffs, western sheriffs, southwest border and national. We have never gotten a response back from this president. In fact, I was told just a couple months ago he’s the first president not to meet with sheriffs in this country. He still has not to date to my knowledge,” Dannels said in response to questioning by Republican Louisiana Rep. Mike Johnson.“We did meet with Secretary Mayorkas. We reached out. I assembled about a dozen sheriffs, we met in El Paso. We sat down with the secretary, gave him a 16-point action plan to share what we thought were common sense, humanitarian, public safety and national security objectives built within that. Never heard back, I asked the secretary where that plan was, what they were gonna do with it. He asked me, ‘what plan?’”
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