Wyoming Legislators Watch Migrants Illegally Cross Border In Arizona

YUMA, Ariz. — Wyoming is about 1,000 miles away from the U.S. southern border with Mexico here.

Despite that physical distance, America’s border crisis is an immigration nightmare for all states, said Yuma County Supervisor Jonathan Lines.

“Every state is a border state now,” he said while giving a group of Wyoming legislators an up-close-and-personal look at the border Thursday and Friday.

That included witnessing a group of illegal immigrants crossing over and being detained.

Three members of the Wyoming Legislature and a state Senate candidate traveled on the southern border town of Yuma to learn more about the mass influx of people crossing illegally there.

Lines is also chairman of the Border Security Alliance (BSA), a group that promotes public policies it believes will secure the border.

Staff from BSA and Lines toured state Sen. Stacy Jones, R-Rock Springs; Reps. Jon Conrad, R-Mountain View, and Tony Niemec, R-Green River; and Senate District 6 candidate Kim Withers of Cheyenne around the area, including a visit to the border wall former President Donald Trump had built.

Jones described the experience of seeing the wall, made up of closely placed dark red slatted metal bars standing at around 30 feet tall, as “sobering,” while Conrad called it “surreal.”

“It’s not just an Arizona issue, it’s a Uinta County issue,” Conrad said of what he learned from the experience.

Immigration has become one of the key issues of the 2024 presidential election, with Republicans pointing out how the number of illegal migrants entering through the southern border skyrocketed after Biden took office.

During Biden's administration so far, there have been more than 8 million encounters with migrants, as well as 1.7 million "getaways," or illegal immigrants who slip past the Border Patrol and are living in the U.S. without any contact with immigration officials, according to a report from the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability.

Noted in the report is a statement from Tom Homan, former director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, who said Biden is the only president ever to "unsecure the border on purpose" and that his "open border polices have created the greatest national security crisis since 9/11."

At The Border

Possibly even more remarkable was that during an early morning visit to the border that started at 1:30 a.m. Friday, the lawmakers and candidate crossed paths with a group of seven women and children who had come across the border and told Lines they were from Mexico.

Scared and intimidated, the group appeared slightly bewildered to be gaped at by a group of unfamiliar strangers taking photos and video of them like paparazzi hovering around celebrities on a red carpet.

The group of immigrants had simply walked into America around the last section of where Trump’s wall had been built, the start of a roughly 8-mile gap, the point where work was halted after Trump left office.

“What’s the purpose of this (wall) when a mile back they can just come around the side?” Jones questioned. “I knew we’re unsecured, but I didn’t think really anybody really grasped to what extent it is.”

From there, a Border Patrol agent took custody of the group, who were then transported for documentation and a later release, at least until a court date that could be years away.

‘It’s The New Slavery’

The people the Wyoming group saw early Friday almost surely simply seeking better lives than what they have, but Lines said even pure intentions are tainted by the sobering reality that is the strength of Mexican drug and criminal cartels.

Many of the illegals crossing near Yuma are trying to get away from the grip the cartels have on their communities, Lines said.

“They’ve sold their souls to the cartels,” he said. “It’s the new slavery.”

He’s skeptical that almost anyone can get across the border these days without some assistance from the cartels.

When people are paying at least $4,000 a head to get assistance in making their crossing, he said it guarantees that nearly all will be in some kind of servitude to the cartels to pay the price of American living. In that scenario, a new life in America quickly becomes American servitude and bondage in their new home.

“They become indebted servants,” Lines said. “I don’t think we’ve begun to understand what this is doing to the country.”

What that means closes the circle on Yuma’s connection to Wyoming: illegal fentanyl, human trafficking, prostitution that all make their way to the Cowboy State eventually, somehow, someway.

Many have argued that immigrants significantly assist in filling blue-collar and low-wage jobs that most Americans don’t want to work. Unemployment is at record lows across the nation, with many employers in Wyoming still short-staffed and looking to fill jobs.

Although Lines doesn’t deny this reality, he only supports immigration as long as it’s done according to the rules with legal citizenship as a defined goal throughout.

Help Wanted

The situation at the southern border has reached crisis levels with record numbers of people apprehended at the crossing illegally or getting through unchecked.

Lines makes no secret that he wants Trump to win the upcoming election and that the border was more secure under the former president than it is under Biden.

But he also pointed to the fact that every president since George H.W. Bush has built some form of new wall during their time in office, and some Democrats like Arizona U.S. Sens. Mark Kelly and Krysten Sinema are starting to get on board, which gives him hope.

“There’s more Democrats than ever saying something needs to be done,” he said.

In June, just more than 84,000 migrants crossed the U.S. southern border. On Thursday, it was announced apprehensions at the border dropped further in July to 56,000, the lowest tally since Biden took office.

Still, Lines believes recent improvements made in border security and the drop in the number of illegal crossings are only a result of Biden putting on an act during an election year, mentioning how there were days earlier in his presidency when Border Patrol was apprehending 1,800 people a day.

“They could have done that when they came into office,” he said of the renewed focus.

More States Need To Get Involved

As much as Lines wants Trump’s border wall finished, which he considers the best wall ever made at the southern border, he still views this as just one tool in the toolbox. Getting support from the states to better secure the border is a cause he also considers incredibly important.

“The states need to demand the government to close the border,” he said. “If the governors won’t do it, state legislators need to.”

During this year’s legislative session in Wyoming, lawmakers approved within the biennial budget $750,000 for the governor’s office to reimburse local law enforcement agencies that assist at the southern border.

On Thursday, Gov. Mark Gordon tapped into that money, announcing that 10 Wyoming Highway Patrol troopers will go to Texas later this month in response to a request from Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.

During the 14-day deployment, the troopers will provide law enforcement and emergency assistance in support of the Texas Department of Safety, and two deputies from the Natrona County Sheriff’s Office are also planned to deploy at a later date.

“Wyoming is committed to closing the open Biden-Harris border,” Gordon said in a press release. “As part of our ongoing relationship with Texas, we will supply resources as they are requested while also making sure we are safe here at home.”

Biden has visited the border twice as president, and new Democratic presidential frontrunner Vice President Kamala Harris once. Lines said Trump has visited Yuma three times and on Thursday, his vice president candidate J.D. Vance visited the border in eastern Arizona.

When a bipartisan immigration package that Sinema helped spearhead died in the Senate earlier this year after Trump led an effort to kill it, Lines said he was disappointed despite not liking about 90% of what was inside it.

“It was supposed to be a starting point or a jumping off point,” Lines said. “I didn’t support the subtotal of the bill, I supported it as a starting point.”

Wyoming To Yuma

From a physical standpoint, southern Arizona doesn’t look too different from the Wyoming landscape — dry, arid and vast.

As the van shuttled lawmakers from the airport in Phoenix south two and half hours to Yuma on Thursday afternoon, green saguaros dotting the landscape as far as the eye could see flashed by, punctuated by the gnarled knobs of hazy mesas, sticking out from the edge of the horizon like a small nose.

What little other vegetation existing seemed to eke out from the dry landscape, well-equipped to handle the blistering heat and relentless desert sun, but far from thriving in the harsh desert environment.

The town of Yuma has a population of around 98,000, which would make it the largest city in Wyoming by a considerable margin if transported there. But other than a few southwestern details like colorfully painted doors at the town’s cheap motels, Yuma could easily be a Wyoming town.

Lines’ family heritage in Yuma dates back to the 1930s. He’s spent his whole life there, where he runs a construction company and has raised 11 children.

It was in the 1980s he first started to see illegal immigration noticeably increase. Over the last decade, it’s taken on a fevered pitch.

There is no direct comparison with any town in Wyoming to the issues Yuma faces on an everyday basis because of the presence of cartels and illegal movement around the border town.

There are murders directly attributed to the cartel, he said, including one that took place on a driveway of a home owned by a farmer who lives near the border. Lines said the location of this act was no coincidence.

“We know that they have established a trade route through Yuma and it’s disrupted,” he said.

They Get Creative

There’s also been instances of members of the cartels dressing up as utility workers and UPS drivers to conceal their movement. A tunnel was found leading from the inside of a local KFC located near the border to Mexico.

Local resources are also depleted assisting the immigrants they are obligated to help. Lines said a local hospital racked up $26 million in uncompensated costs over an 18-month period while local food banks are also struggling to meet demands.

Locals may be part of the problem as well, he said, as active investigations are underway into the suspicious wiring of millions of dollars some make each month.

As stark of a contrast this may be to everyday life in Wyoming, Lines stressed that the impacts of illegal narcotics peddled across the border do show their face in the Cowboy State through overdose deaths.

According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Fentanyl takes the lives of more than 150 Americans each day and around 55,000 each year. In 2023, Border Patrol seized 26,700 pounds of fentanyl at the southern border, a 480% increase since 2020. On Thursday, officers seized about 4 million blue fentanyl pills weighing more than 1,000 pounds at the Arizona border, a quantity large enough to kill every American by overdose.

Biden’s promotion of an increase in drug seizures as a positive, Lines finds almost laughable, as he believes it simply proves there’s much more narcotics coming across the border than under Trump.

“They’re choosing to turn a blind eye and not be part of the solution,” he said.

Contact Leo Wolfson at leo@cowboystatedaily.com

Leo Wolfson can be reached at leo@cowboystatedaily.com.