(The Center Square) – Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd says the biggest problem with illegal border crossers is they’re coming “across the border specifically to commit crime.”
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“They’re coming across the border hand over fist as a result of very organized systems and processes [created] by the criminal cartels out of Mexico. They’re bringing with them methamphetamine. They’re bringing with them fentanyl,” the Florida sheriff said in a discussion with Citizens Defending Freedom founder Steve Maxwell.
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“We’re not just dealing with migrants coming here to better themselves,” he added. “That’s not the issue that’s creating the biggest problem. The biggest problem is that these folks are coming across the border … from all kinds of terrorist nations. … Cartels are flooding the U.S. with drugs and killing thousands of people a year and we don’t even know yet the end game of the terrorists who are sneaking across. That’s still oblivious to us.
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“All the while we have Congress and politicians playing games. They’re not changing the system because there’s not been a major explosion or implosion, but trust me when I tell you, it’s on the way.”
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Judd said he talks to constituents every day, including Republicans, Democrats, independents and unregistered voters. None, he said, “thinks it’s OK to bring fentanyl across that southern border and kill our kids. No one thinks that’s a good idea of any political stripe. No one that I talk to … thinks it’s OK for terrorists to come across the southern border … and we know they are, to plan their next attack against the people of this country. No one thinks that. So, if no one thinks that, why is it that our representatives that we send to protect us don’t recognize that?”
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He said the most basic rule that should be in place “is you just don’t let people that you don’t know come into this country.”
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Retired FBI counterintelligence officials warned Congress last month that a terrorist attack was likely imminent and preventable. They said, “It would be difficult to overstate the danger represented by the presence inside our borders of what is comparatively a multi division army of young single adult males from hostile nations and regions whose background, intent, or allegiance is completely unknown. They include individuals encountered by border officials and then possibly released into the country, along with the shockingly high estimate of ‘gotaways,’ meaning those who have entered and evaded apprehension.”
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An estimated two million gotaways illegally entered since January 2021, The Center Square has reported. Despite claims by the administration that the policies they put in place are preventing illegal entry, in the first quarter of fiscal 2024, apprehensions at the southern border were the highest in U.S. history, totaling over 785,000 and greater than the population of three U.S. states.
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Texas Gov. Greg Abbot and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis have also warned about terrorists and cartel operatives bringing fentanyl through the southern border to kill Americans.
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Abbott has argued that in the president’s first year in office, fentanyl killed nearly 20 times more people than those killed in terrorist attacks over decades.
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Since Abbott launched his border security mission, Operation Lone Star, in March 2021, a multi-agency effort in Texas, including from Florida, has seized more than 458 million lethal doses of fentanyl, enough to kill everyone in the U.S. and Canada.
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In the first two fiscal years of Biden’s presidency, CBP agents seized enough fentanyl to kill nearly 5 billion people, The Center Square has reported. Last year, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents seized more than 77 million fentanyl pills and nearly 12,000 pounds of fentanyl powder – the most the DEA seized in a single year in agency history. The quantity translates to more than 386 million deadly doses of fentanyl – enough to kill more than everyone in the United States.
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In Florida, Judd said, “we’ve seized enough fentanyl in the last year to overdose and kill probably 8 or 9 million people.” Fentanyl being smuggled through the southern border “doesn’t stay at the southern border,” he said. “It affects every community in this nation. We used to think it was the big deal to seize a gram or an ounce of fentanyl. We’re seizing it by the multi kilo today.”
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Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody for years has called on the president to designate illicit fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction, warning it could be used by terrorists.
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The amount that isn’t being seized is the leading cause of death of Americans between ages 25 and 45. According to the CDC, from May 2020 to April 2021, the estimated number of drug overdose deaths in the United States exceeded 100,000 over a 12-month period for the first time in U.S. history. The majority, 64%, involved synthetic opioids, “mainly illicitly manufactured fentanyl.” Drug overdose death rates involving fentanyl increased in 2021 by 279% from 2016 and by 24% from 2020, the CDC reported.
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“But here’s the silent problem that we don’t know,” Judd said. “We don’t know how many terrorists have come into this country over that southern border that have not made any noise yet. But they’re coming here and they’re mustering and they’re planning for the next event and it’s going to occur.”
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