Richard K. Jones, sheriff of Butler County, Ohio, and an outspoken critic of federal efforts to control illegal immigration, has posted a YouTube-style video report on his department's Web page about his recent trip to the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona.
Traveling to Cochise County, one of the country's most popular alien- and drug-smuggling corridors, Sheriff Jones said he wanted to get a first-hand look at how secure America's borders are four years after the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and the establishment of the "One Face at the Border" program.
But what he and his traveling companion, Ohio state Rep. Courtney Coombs, saw was more of the "insecurity of the border," he said.
Sheriff Jones, a member of the National Sheriff's Committee on Immigration Issues, says in the 15-minute video report that he wanted the public to know exactly what he saw and what he was told about the problem of illegal immigration by Cochise County Sheriff Larry Dever.
"Don't believe all these people are coming for a better life," he said, adding that many drug dealers are paying illegal aliens to smuggle marijuana and cocaine over the mountains and desert from Mexico into the United States.
Sheriff Jones has asked Homeland Security and the Mexican government to reimburse him in his fight against Mexican-based drug rings in his county. He said the Senate's failure to pass a comprehensive immigration reform bill is reason enough for states to target illegal aliens themselves and called on state officials to enact legislation to deal with what he called a "continuing illegal-immigration crisis."
"Let's create stricter state laws to go after employers who hire persons who are in this state illegally," he said.
The sheriff has advocated immigration reform for more than two years, when illegal aliens started swamping the Butler County jail. He has vigorously derided the cost of housing illegal-alien inmates and targeted the employers who hired them, openly expanding his campaign to include the cost to taxpayers for illegals who use the county's schools, hospitals, courts and law enforcement.
"Just in this county alone, the cost to the taxpayers is $1 million," he said. "Add to that the cost to the citizens throughout the United States and that taxpayer burden is in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
"The law is the law. We must enforce the law we have. The only additional change in the law should be that our local law enforcement should have the authority to enforce the federal immigration law without having to obtain federal permission," he said.
— Jerry Seper, national reporter, The Washington Times
