Goliad County Sheriff Roy Boyd is raising the alarm over rising numbers of illegal border crossings and calling on President Joe Biden’s administration to place more pressure on Central American countries to act.
Sheriff Boyd says his community, located about 200 miles north of the U.S. southern land border, is starting to feel the strain from the traffic crossing into the United States.
“In my community, our arrests are up over 440 percent in our small county of 7,000 people,” Sheriff Boyd told NTD News’ “Capitol Report” on Thursday. “That’s a tremendous amount.”
Sheriff Boyd said his office has gone from an average of 77 arrests a year while President Donald Trump was in office to now more than 400 arrests a year under the Biden administration.
“That right there shows you the drastic increase that this border crisis has brought to small communities, rural communities like Goliad, Texas,” he said.
The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency reported a record-setting 1.7 million encounters at the U.S. southwest land border in 2021. That record was surpassed the following year when CBP recorded 2.3 million encounters along the southwest land border in 2022.
Earlier this year, the Biden administration sought to overhaul how border officials process people attempting to enter the United States illegally. The Biden administration ended pandemic-era Title 42 rules that had allowed U.S. officials to rapidly expel border-crossers under the justification of preventing cross-border transmission of COVID-19. In addition to dropping Title 42, the Biden administration began encouraging border-crossers to apply for entry into the United States through a mobile app called CBP One.
CBP reported a drop in border encounters in June, after Title 42 expired. But those border encounters have steadily increased. CBP has recorded 2.2 million border encounters in fiscal year 2023, though it has yet to share figures for the final month of the fiscal year.
Sheriff Boyd said he believes rank-and-file border security and immigration officials have little ability to address the influx of border crossings.
“I talk with federal agents on a regular basis. And this is all by design by the government, and they’re not going to stop this,” the Goliad County Sheriff told NTD News. “And unfortunately for the men and women in [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] and Border Patrol and all the other federal agencies, they are just having to do what they’re being told. And it’s the people above them that are the problems that are perpetuating this constant crisis that we seem to find ourselves in.”
Pressuring Action From Central America
This week, Democrat New York City Mayor Eric Adams embarked on a “fact-finding” mission in Mexico, Ecuador, and Columbia, to learn more about the factors driving people across the U.S. southern border.
New York City has been a major recipient of asylum applicants, illegal immigrants awaiting their removal proceedings, and otherwise inadmissible illegal immigrants who have been allowed into the United States through a parole program.
New York City has designated itself a “sanctuary jurisdiction,” meaning it limits or outright refuses cooperation with federal immigration enforcement efforts. New York City also has a “right to shelter” policy, to provide assistance to anyone who asks for it.
Mr. Adams has shown increasing alarm over the number of non-citizens arriving in New York City to avail themselves of the shelter policy and has sought to suspend the shelter policy. Mr. Adams has also sought more federal financial assistance to compensate the city for taking on these non-citizens.
Though Sheriff Boyd credited the New York City mayor for traveling to Central America to address the press of people crossing into the United States, the Texan argued that the effort would make little difference.
“I appreciate [Mr. Adams] going down to do what he’s doing, but until they actually change their policies, and change our official stance on what we need to do with immigration, it’s not going to do a whole lot of good,” Sheriff Boyd said. “Those people are already on their way. They’re already being bought and paid for. They’re going to come here, regardless of what he says.”
Sheriff Boyd argued that New York City should reverse its sanctuary status and called for the United States to take a more stern approach to dissuade illegal border crossings.
“You have to go to Mexico, you have to create a system by which you punish them if they continue to allow this to happen,” Sheriff Boyd said. “And when I say punish, I mean economically, we have to use our strength against their weakness. And we have to leverage our capacity to cripple their economy if necessary, in order to get them to comply, and stop this from happening.”
Sheriff Boyd said Mexico has the ability to stop the flow of people over the U.S. southern border, but said Mexico is currently “making too much money off of the illegal immigration” to want to take action.