I know this town. Or, knew it. In 1981 I was a soldier fresh out of boot camp and stationed at Ft. Huachuca, Arizona for intelligence school. I had never been to Southern Arizona before and as I traveled to small towns not far from the border, towns like Gila Bend, Douglas, and Palominas, it was evident that without tight border security these small towns would not be able to cope with an influx of illegal aliens that would fill their streets. Forty years later, my old analysis became a reality.

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FNC: “The mayor of Gila Bend, Arizona, told Fox News on Monday he is very concerned about the escalating crisis at the Mexican border as news broke of a potentially large influx of illegal immigrants heading for his community. Mayor Chris Riggs, an independent, told ‘Your World’ that his town ‒ about halfway between Sonoyta, Sonora, Mexico and Phoenix ‒ is essentially being made into a waypoint for illegal immigrants captured by federal authorities. He told host Charles Payne that Gila Bend is already ‘very economically depressed’ and that it does not have even the basic resources necessary for what he fears could be an expensive unfunded mandate of sorts.”

Said Riggs, “We can barely afford to take care of the people that we have here and our community now, and as of this second, the Border Patrol advised us that they’re going to drop people off here and do sort of like: ‘They’re your problem’. We just do not have the ability to care for these people. Quite frankly, it’s going to cost us tens of thousands of dollars a year to be able to just to provide them with a bottle of water and a sandwich when they get dropped off.” This is criminal. But the Biden administration talks about Trump’s “cruel” border security policies.

“I have a lot of seniors and elders here between Gila Bend and San Lucy Village that are susceptible to COVID,” Riggs said, referring to a community north of his town populated by members of the Tohono tribe. “We have not seen the [coronavirus] outbreak that other areas have seen in Arizona, yet we’re going to get punished for their choices. We are completely in the dark. We asked for documentation, some kind of documentation. Give us something. We’re still not getting anything. So I mean, we’re really frustrated with how we’re being treated through a crisis that they started.” His message to Joe Biden? “It needs to stop. The federal government has to step up and do their job. They’re the ones that created this problem, they need to fix it.” Biden won Arizona in 2020. It looks like he has no intention of keeping it in his column.