Sheriffs live with the real-world consequences of decisions made in Washington every day. We welcomed the depth of the New York Times’s recent 4,000-word opus on the Biden administration’s border failures, appropriately titled, “How Biden Ignored Warnings and Lost Americans’ Faith in Immigration.”
But let’s be honest: This reporting is years late. Sheriffs — Democrats, Republicans, and independents — were sounding the alarm in real time, pleading for national attention while the crisis escalated right before our eyes.
In July 2022, sheriffs hosted New York Times reporters on a border tour so they could see what we see: ranch roads littered with abandoned clothing, stash houses hiding terrified migrants, and makeshift graveyards marking lives lost to desperation and false promises.
The same tragedy appeared in our own reporting: At least 856 migrants died at our southern border in fiscal 2022, the deadliest year on record.
To sheriffs, those aren’t statistics. They are fathers, daughters, toddlers in diapers — human beings who deserved better than to be exploited by cartels and failed by federal indifference.