Yuma sheriff blasts Biden for failing to enforce border laws hours before Title ... trends now
The Arizona sheriff at the sharp end of the country's immigration crisis slammed the Biden administration on Thursday, saying it had failed to prepare for the end of Title 42.
'It's a cluster,' Sheriff Leon Wilmot told DailyMail.com in an exclusive interview.
He said Border Patrol detained about 1200 people on Wednesday and were on course to do the same again on Thursday.
It was part of an expected surge of arrivals by migrants as the U.S. relaxes a tough public health restriction that meant millions of arrivals could be immediately expelled without even making asylum claims.
On Thursday, Yuma Mayor Douglas Nicholls demanded that President Joe Biden declare a national emergency at the southern border.
'It's a cluster,' Yuma Sheriff Leon Wilmot told DailyMail.com Thursday in an exclusive interview about the end of Title 42. He and his county are in the frontline of the border crisis
Hours before Title 42 was lifted, hundreds of migrants lined up on U.S. soil in Yuma to begin the process of applying for asylum. Numbers have surged in recent days
And Wilmot said the lack of preparation meant President Joe Biden was unable to enforce existing border laws and said overwhelmed authorities in nearby Cochise County were already releasing people on to the streets without proper processing or court dates.
He reserved particular fury for Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, and claims that the U.S. was toughening its response.
'Any good leader that was facing this kind of situation would have stood up Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), got emergency funding for ICE, put up shelters in their temporary buildings to accommodate all this, so proper processing could be done,' he said.
'He did none of this. So he doesn't have a plan.
'His plan is obviously intentionally to just allow everybody into this country and try to track down that many millions of people years down the road.
'It's a false narrative that this administration is pushing to the American people.'
On Thursday morning, the extent of the surge was evident in Yuma even before the sun came up. More than 300 people waited in line to
