Do Something About the Border

Regarding the “Do Something” article last week, Sheriff Brown pleaded with Santa Barbara County supervisors to do something about the fentanyl deaths in the county. This year at 226, not all from fentanyl but still a lot of deaths, many children, White, Brown, Black are all affected.

The supervisors responded that “millions of tax dollars had been spent on new jails and new officers and so don’t expect more right now, we are broke.” But the supes are missing the point. These new potent drugs are coming in across an open Mexican border. A border that for 100 years had the military on it, from 1848-1948.

I was at the California border last week, at Jacumba Hot Springs, with a film crew, and we saw firsthand what and who comes across this open border. We saw the cartel trucks bringing in loads of homeless immigrants. The federal Border Patrol could only watch and monitor as these immigrants walked around the end of a 17-foot high Trump border wall and strolled down a desert road, one whole mile into America. Here they waited under some large tents 100 yards from Interstate 8, where white vans from Catholic charities arrive daily and take them to the interiors of California.

These were mostly young men from South America, the Middle East, and Asia, and a few women with 5 year olds. If American women took their children into the desert to wander, they would be considered unfit as parents, but here they are rewarded for endangering their children. No searches of their packs or suitcases occurred

This was the daylight deliveries. At night the cartel brings in more people under darkness. They are picked up at the highway, and that is where much of our illegal drugs are coming from.

It would seem an obvious solution to close off these border areas where the cartel can drive right up to an American highway and drop off people and drugs, to be picked up and transported to our cities. That is certainly a root cause of drug use and deaths in our communities. I propose our borders to be shut in all instances and places, exceptions would be made for those immigrants who have successfully applied and waited for citizenship.

The asylum system is not taken seriously and is abused. Those people can wait in next-door nations and not enter America on false pretexts. As a congressional candidate, safe and controlled borders is what I would vote for.

Thomas Cole is a candidate for U.S. Congressional District 24, California.