Arizona farmer John Ladd warned on Tuesday that US Border Patrol agents and communities were “overwhelmed” by the surge in migrants, who he said were “invading” their cities.
“We were spoiled by Donald Trump,” Ladd told Fox & Friends on Tuesday, while criticizing President Biden’s immigration policies amid a wave of migrants on the southern border of the United States.
The farmer who lives along the Arizona-Mexico border and has witnessed the escalating situation firsthand, went on to say that the Biden government is “allowing everyone now to cross” the border. He warned that “it will ruin our country”.
“It all started even before Biden took office,” said Ladd. “As soon as the election was over, he promised an amnesty to 11 million people. Here they come.”
In his first week in office, President Biden signed a series of executive orders, including the government’s 100-day moratorium on deportations. Before Biden’s inauguration, a large caravan of migrants was heading for America’s southern border, with others reportedly following suit in the weeks that followed.
In a break with Trump’s immigration policies, under Biden, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) would mainly arrest and remove people who pose a threat to national security, crimes committed designated as “aggravated” crimes or recently crossed the border, from according to guidelines released last month.
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Former President Trump, whose administration has taken hundreds of steps to restrict legal and illegal immigration, instructed the ICE to arrest anyone who was illegally in the country.
Recently, ICE officials and agents have expressed concern about a directive that will limit their ability to conduct enforcement operations and could lead to the entry of potentially dangerous people into the country, said Jon Feere, ICE’s senior adviser under Trump.
Speaking to Sinclair’s “Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson” on Sunday, an Arizona border chief warned that illegal immigration is on track to exceed the last three years combined.
“At the moment, we are about 100% above where we were in the last fiscal year,” said John Modlin, the acting chief of the Tucson sector patrol officer for the Border Patrol.
“In the first four months of this fiscal year, we have already surpassed the entire year of 2018,” he added. “If the flow continues at the pace it is here, by the end of this fiscal year we will have exceeded 18, 19 and 20 in total.”
On Tuesday, host Brian Kilmeade asked Ladd what he would say to those who think there is no crisis at the border.
“They are living under a rock somewhere,” he replied.
President Biden signed 17 executive actions during his first day in office – many of which reversed the policies and guidelines of the Trump administration – such as canceling funding and building the border wall.
“We’ve had the contractor here since last April working on Donald Trump’s 30-foot wall. They [the Biden administration] closed them five weeks ago, “said Ladd.
“You talk about a crime, 300 to 400 people here in small towns in Arizona did a good job, we have material on the floor, we have a plant ready to make concrete, but it has been idle for five weeks.”
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A White House spokesman did not immediately respond to Fox News’s request for comment.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.