Southwest
Kamala Harris' border czar record called out as Arizona rancher reports 100 illegals crossing his land a day
An Arizona rancher whose remote property sits on the very end of the incomplete southern border wall tells Fox News Digital that he’s encountered thousands of illegals making their way into the United States under the Biden-Harris administration and has concerns that many of them appear to have ties to cartels or have come from the Middle East.
He is calling out Vice President Harris’ tenure as President Biden’s point person on immigration after he says cameras show hundreds of illegals slipping around the end of the border wall and into the U.S. on a daily basis.
“She is the border czar, she’s always been the border czar, and she’s been a total failure at preventing people from coming into our country,” said Jim Chilton, an Arizona rancher whose 50,000-acre property includes the incomplete end of former President Trump’s border wall.
“For the last six months, we’ve been averaging about 100 people a day coming from Mexico around the end of the wall,” he told Fox News Digital. And those are the ones who aren’t hiding. Others, escorted by cartel smugglers, wear camouflage and carpet shoes and try to avoid detection, he said.
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Vice President Harris visits the El Paso central processing center in Texas, near the border between the United States and Mexico, on June 25, 2021. (REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein)
“We’ve not seen a decrease in them either,” he said. “On Saturday, I ran into a group of about a dozen. They appeared to be from the Middle East, and they were in bad shape.”
He gave them water and reported the encounter to the Samaritans nonprofit group, which also called Border Patrol.
Still images from motion-activated surveillance cameras show groups of camouflaged people sneaking onto an Arizona rancher’s property after making their way around an incomplete portion of the southern border wall in May 2024. (Courtesy of Jim Chilton)
“Vice President Harris, you have not secured the border. I’ve heard you say it was secure. It’s not secure. And we need to secure the border at the international border. We’re a sovereign country.”
Chilton has five motion-activated cameras spread out over his ranch – just one for every 10,000 acres.
“Since Biden was elected and took office, I’ve had 3,550 people imaged on my motion-activated cameras,” he said.
Those people are seen trying to conceal themselves wearing camouflage clothes and strips of carpet tied to their shoes, he said. Separately, he estimated another 5,000 people in April alone crossed his property without trying to hide.
Still images from motion-activated surveillance cameras show groups of camouflaged people sneaking onto an Arizona rancher’s property after making their way around an incomplete portion of the southern border wall in May 2024. (Courtesy of Jim Chilton)
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While Harris and her supporters have distanced herself from the crisis at the border and rejected the label “border czar,” the House of Representatives officially rebuked her last week.
“We’ve become a dumping ground for the world, and we’re not going to take it anymore.”
Trump, speaking at a campaign rally last Wednesday, called her “the architect of the border invasion” and blamed the current administration for record illegal immigration, pointing to a chart that showed historic lows at the end of his presidency – and an all-time high this past March under Biden and Harris.
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“She inherited the best border in U.S. history and turned it into the worst border in the world,” he said, adding that the current administration halted border wall construction, defended sanctuary city policies and put an end to his “remain in Mexico” policy.
Trump cited a recent Homeland Security warning about the Venezuelan prison gang, Tren de Aragua, targeting police for assassination, as well as a number of high-profile crimes against women and girls around the country, including the recent slaying of Houston 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray, who was sexually assaulted, strangled and thrown off a bridge. Police arrested two illegals from Venezuela in connection with the murder.
“If I am elected, on day 1 we will begin the largest deportation in the world,” Trump said.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump holds a campaign rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, July 31, 2024. (REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz)
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For relatives of victims like Jocelyn and for everyday citizens like Chilton, evidence of the border failure is a part of daily life.
Chilton noted that it can take more than 45 minutes to an hour for deputies to respond to his remote property in an emergency.
“We have to defend ourselves the way my ancestors had to defend themselves because we have no real law enforcement,” he said. “And I am outraged. I have five and a half miles of the international border, and Trump’s wall came out five miles. The end of the wall is on my ranch.”
Still images from motion-activated surveillance cameras show groups of camouflaged people sneaking onto an Arizona rancher’s property after making their way around an incomplete portion of the southern border wall in May 2024. (Courtesy of Jim Chilton)
Now, he said, “cartel scouts” prowl the mountains, guiding people in to avoid detection. They could be bringing in terrorists and criminals, he said.
Separately, “economic immigrants” are also arriving in droves, but they don’t try to hide, he said. They come into the U.S. around the end of the wall and hope to run into Border Patrol on purpose.
“The economic immigrants wanting to be apprehended are from all over the world,” Chilton said. “I think the dozen that I ran into last Saturday were from the Middle East. They looked Syrian to me … all over the world lots of people from Africa, Bangladesh, India. It’s just unbelievable.”
Fox News Digital reached out to Harris for comment.
Fox News’ Brooke Curto contributed to this report.
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Los Angeles, Ca
‘It was everything we worked for, and now it’s gone’: Family heartbroken after fire destroys home, kills 3 dogs
A vegetation fire in San Bernardino burned multiple hillside homes to the ground on Monday, devastating multiple families including one who lost their three beloved dogs.
The fast-moving blaze, dubbed the Edgehill Fire, broke out at 2:40 p.m. near the 3000 block of Beverly Drive and forced evacuations for all residents living on the south side of Ridge Line Drive, San Bernardino County Fire Department spokesperson Eric Sherwin said Monday.
Residents living on the north side of Edgehill Road west to Beverly Drive and east to Circle Road were also ordered to evacuate, according to Cal Fire.
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Sky5 view of the Edgehill Fire in San Bernardino, California on Aug. 5, 2024. (KTLA) -
Sky5 view of the Edgehill Fire in San Bernardino, California on Aug. 5, 2024. (KTLA) -
Sky5 view of the Edgehill Fire in San Bernardino, California on Aug. 5, 2024. (KTLA) -
Sky5 view of the Edgehill Fire in San Bernardino, California on Aug. 5, 2024. (KTLA) -
A rapidly growing fire burned homes in San Bernardino County on Monday, Aug. 5, 2024. (RMG News)
The community most affected by the blaze, Little Mountain, is “not unaccustomed” to fire, Sherwin said, adding that by the time fire crews arrived on scene, many people were already evacuating.
Sky5 video showed several homes burned down to their foundations, including the residence of the Hernandez family, whose three dogs – Arnie, Vinnie and Mookie – were home alone when the blaze broke out.
“My husband and I bought this house almost three-and-a-half years ago,” Erika Hernandez said. “We were first-time homebuyers, and we were so happy about this house.”
“It was everything we worked for, and now it’s gone,” she added.
As of early Tuesday morning, the 100-acre fire was 75% contained, fire officials said. More than 200 firefighters were assigned to the blaze on Monday afternoon, and crews remained in the area overnight to extinguish the flames.
KTLA 5’s Carlos Herrera spoke with Sherwin on Tuesday morning, who emphasized the importance of the overnight firefight.
“That was our goal last night knowing that we were going to have some recovery in the overnight hours with lower temperatures,” Sherwin said. “And the fact that we got our containment from 25 up to 75% speaks not only to the work of the firefighters but taking advantage of those low temperatures.”
Evacuation orders remained in effect for all residents Tuesday except those living on Ridge Line Drive, but in an update issued shortly before 9 p.m. Monday, the San Bernardino Police Department said that the fire was “very much under control.”
An evacuation center for impacted residents was set up at Cajon High School. A person was detained and then released in connection to the fire, police added.
The cause of the blaze is under investigation.
The interview with San Bernardino County Fire Department spokesperson Eric Sherwin can be viewed below.
Sitting in traffic on a sweltering afternoon, waiting to cross the border back into Arizona from a meeting in Mexico, Nogales Mayor Jorge Maldonado’s main request for the next administration was achingly relevant: more Customs and Border Protection staff.
“We got people trying to cross the border that are taking two or three hours long,” Maldonado said. “These are the legal crossers… and we’re not taking care of them.”
Perhaps a surprising priority, as video of people sneaking through holes in fences, wading through chest-deep rivers and steering boats onto beaches have dominated coverage of the United States’ border crisis.
Traffic is seen backed up in Nogales, Arizona, as drivers wait to cross into Nogales, Sonora, Mexico, on Oct. 8, 2022. The ongoing migration crisis at the southern border has strained Customs and Border Protection, affecting even legal crossings between the U.S. and Mexico, according to the Nogales mayor. (Max Herman/AFP via Getty Images)
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But despite being located in Arizona’s Tucson sector, a stretch of border that saw an explosion in migrant encounters earlier this year, Maldonado said Nogales hasn’t experienced as dramatic a flood of border crossings as other areas.
What they do have is a steady stream of American and Mexican citizens trying to legally cross the border for work, school, recreation and commerce.
“These are the people that are going to come into our country and leave their money,” Maldonado said. “We’ve lost focus on the legals because we were so concentrated on the illegals.”
Every section of the border is different and has different needs, Maldonado said. That’s why he and other mayors say it’s so important for the next presidential administration to visit the southern border.
“People in Washington are making policies a thousand, 2,000 miles away,” Dr. Victor Treviño, the mayor of Laredo, Texas, said. “We serve on the front lines… and if they come here and listen to us a little bit, that might help them.”
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During the Trump administration, Mayor Douglas Nicholls said he was invited to the Oval Office to discuss a surge of border crossings near Yuma, and left the meeting with more resources. Shortly after that, Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy took effect, which Nicholls said drastically cut back on illegal entries.
By contrast, Nicholls said requests for policy changes “haven’t landed anywhere” with Biden or Harris, despite the vice president being tasked with addressing the root causes of Central American migration.
“The term ‘border czar’… it’s become more of a political liability since there wasn’t a lot done,” Nicholls said when asked why the White House might be distancing Harris from the informal title.
The Biden Administration oversaw unprecedented levels of illegal immigration. While annual migrant encounters ranged from a low of about 303,916 to a high of 851,508 during Trump’s tenure, crossings surged to 1,734,686 in Biden’s first year in office.
Border encounters continued to rise, hitting 2.5 million in 2023 and 1.8 million with three months still to go in fiscal year 2024.
Migrants cross through a gap in the U.S.-Mexico border fence on Dec. 18, 2023, in Jacumba Hot Springs, California. (Mark Abramson/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
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But all three border mayors said they have seen a significant decrease in illegal crossings lately.
“We really don’t see a large amount of migrants crossing anymore,” Treviño said in Laredo.
He credited much of that decrease to Biden’s new border policies, which were implemented in June.
The measures restrict asylum eligibility and make it easier to remove people who crossed the border illegally. That month, encounters at the southern border hit their lowest point since Biden took office, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data.
Republicans slammed the move as a “political stunt” and “cheap” ploy to garner goodwill mere months ahead of the election. Biden in turn blamed congressional Republicans for blocking bipartisan border legislation earlier this year.
“That’s kind of been the frustration is, here at the 11th hour, now the president put an executive order that is along the lines of what we’re really looking for, but really it’s years, literally, late,” Nicholls said.
Nicholls hopes the next president will work with countries like Mexico to find “incentives for them to be a partner on solving this and not just a pass through.”
Vice President Kamala Harris and migrants at the southern border. (Getty Images)
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“The next administration that comes into power really needs to have a change of policy that is at the root of our immigration,” Nicholls said, adding that it “would be great” if Congress could act on the border, but that lawmakers would likely take too long.
He also suggested better funding for federal agencies like ICE, and local communities that find their emergency services overwhelmed by migrants.
“The impacts to communities and to the nonprofits, while they’re funded right now, those are not sustainable programs,” he said. And so we need to get to the point where the numbers make those programs not needed.”
Ramiro Vargas contributed to the accompanying video.
Read the full article from Here
A car flew off of I-5 on Monday afternoon, leaving three of the four occupants dead in the collision.
According to stringer service RMG News, what appeared to be a white sedan drove off of the 5 Freeway about 2 miles south of Templin Highway in Castaic at about 4:30 p.m.. It then crashed into a tree on the side of the road.
Three of the four occupants killed. Their identities were not yet released as of Monday night.
The surviving occupant was extricated from the vehicle and was transported to a local hospital. They were in critical condition as of Monday night.
No cause of the crash has been revealed. It’s unknown if drugs or alcohol were a factor.
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