The Daily Signal - 'I Think a Lot of People Don't Realize How Much [Law-Enforcement Personnel] Care,' Arizona Sheriff Says

Episode Date: February 25, 2020

Most people don’t understand the extent to which law enforcement and the Border Patrol become humanitarian and first-aid responders to illegal immigrants trying to enter the country, according to Sheriff Mark Lamb of Pinal County. I recently traveled to the U.S. Mexico border, and spoke with Sheriff Lamb, who serves an Arizona county about 60 miles from the border. Sheriff Lamb joins the podcast to talk about the largely unknown humanitarian role of law enforcement and the border patrol with illegal immigrants. Read the lightly edited interview, posted below, or listen on the podcast. We also cover these stories: A case about whether Philadelphia can exclude a Ctholic charity agency that won’t allow same-sex couples to adopt children will be heading to the Supreme Court. Harvey Weinstein, who formerly produced films in Hollywood was found guilty on Monday of five charges tied to sexual assaults and faces up to 25 years in prison. President Donald Trump is touring India and has been greeted with a large dose of spectacle. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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And I'm Rachel Del Judas. Most people don't understand the extent to which law enforcement and the Border Patrol become humanitarian and first aid responders to illegal immigrants trying to enter the country, according to Sheriff Mark Lamb of Pineau County. I recently took a trip to the U.S. Mexico border and spoke with Sheriff Lamb, who serves in Arizona County that's about 60 miles from the border. Stay tuned for what he had to say about the largely unknown humanitarian role of law enforcement and the Border Patrol. If you're enjoying this podcast, please be sure to leave a review or a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage others to subscribe.

Now on to our top news. A case about whether Philadelphia can exclude a Catholic charity agency that won't allow same-sex couples to adopt children will be heading to the Supreme Court. On Monday, the Supreme Court announced that it would take up the case of Catholic Social Services. a faith-based charity that has served in Philadelphia for over a century and three foster-parent families against the city who say that their First Amendment rights have been violated. The case is Fulton v. City of Philadelphia. The city has argued that it should be within their discretion

to put contractual limits on the services they use. The City of Philadelphia is proud of our long-standing commitment to supporting freedom of religion and preserving equal access to services for all people, regardless of their race, national origin, religion, age, sex, disability, sexual orientation, or gender identity, city solicitor Marcel Pratt said in a statement, according to the Hill. Abiding by that commitment is central to any contract that the city enters into. In the Supreme Court brief, the Catholic agency said that the court's decision would be

consequential to religious liberty and families. Here and in cities across the country, religious foster and adoption agencies have repeatedly been forced to close their doors, and many more are under threat, the brief said. These questions are unavoidable, They raise issues of great consequence for children and families nationwide, and the problem will only continue to grow until these questions are resolved by this court. Harvey Weinstein, who formerly produced films in Hollywood, was found guilty on Monday of five charges tied to sexual assault and faces up to 25 years in prison. Weinstein, who is judged by a Manhattan jury, per Fox News, was found guilty of a criminal sex act for assaulting production assistant Mimi Haley. at his apartment in 2006 and third-degree rape of a woman in 2013. The judge found him not guilty on the most serious charge, predatory sexual assault,

which could have resulted in a life sentence. He was ordered to jail by the judge immediately after conviction. President Donald Trump is touring India and has been greeted with a large dose of spectacle. Trump was joined by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a 100,000-person stadium on Monday. where most spectators were a white cap that said, Namaste Trump, or welcome Trump. Trump said in his opening remarks to the crowd, America loves India, America respects India,

and America will always be faithful and loyal friends to the Indian people. Trump also visited the Taj Mahal and the former home of Indian independence leader, Mahondas Gandhi. The trip is intended to further secure the Indian and American alliance and reinvigorate trade negotiation between the two countries. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell more than 1,000 points on Monday, sparked in large part by unrest about the continued spread of the coronavirus beyond China and the economic implications that entails. According to CNBC, the drop was the biggest percentage drop for the SMP 500 since August,

and it was the biggest Dow point drop since October 2018. The Dow also gave up its gain for 2020. Catherine Johnson, a NASA mathematician depicted in the movie Hidden Figures, which is about the black women who worked on the Apollo Space Program, has died at the age of 101. In the movie, Johnson was portrayed by Taraji P. Henson. Johnson contributed to the 1969 lunar landing, according to the NASA website,

by making calculations that would help to sync Project Apollo's lunar lander with the moon orbiting command and service module. NASA administrator Jim Bridenstein said in a statement, Johnson helped our nation enlarge the frontiers of space, even as she made huge strides that also opened doors for women and people of color in the universal human quest to explore space. Next up, my interview with Sheriff Mark Lamb, who talks about the humanitarian work of the Border Patrol and law enforcement. If you're tired of high taxes, fewer health care choices, and bigger and bigger government, it's time to partner with the most impactful conservative organization in America. We're the Heritage Foundation, and we're the Heritage Foundation. we're committed to solving the issues America faces. Together, we'll fight back against the rising

tide of homegrown socialism, and we'll fight four conservative solutions that are making families more free and more prosperous. But we can't do it without you. Please join us at heritage.org. We're joined today on the Daily Signal podcast by Sheriff Mark Lamb, who is Sheriff of Penal County in Arizona. Sheriff Lamb, thank you so much for being with us today. Thank you. Glad to be here. Well, so to start off, you work in a border county in Arizona. What kinds of things do you see and experience in your work as a sheriff day to day? Well, one of the interesting things is we're not right on the border. We're about 60 miles off the border.

But what we have in our county is on the south end, we have a Native American community. And that Native American reservation actually goes into Mexico. And so we deal with the smugglers and the cartel pushing bodies and drugs through the desert area. Right on the other side, there's three-strand barbed wire fence, maybe some Normandy barrier. They come through there and come right into our county, and we're the first county that you get to once you get off the reservation. So I'm here this week with a bunch of lawmakers and some other media, and you were talking to all

of us earlier today about the drug trafficking crisis that you see on a day-to-day basis. Can you tell us about that? you know, it's, it's, I tell people all the time, this isn't about immigration anymore. This is about, this is about drug trafficking and human trafficking into this country. And so we work hard because we understand that if it's going to make it to our communities, but also it's going to make it all across America. And so we see what the cartel is doing. They're trying to bring, like I said, human beings into this country.

They're trying to be drugs into this country. And we fill a responsibility to be able to stop that. before it gets across America. Can you tell us when you pick someone up what the procedure is and then what kinds of things you see that these people leave in their remnant as they go on their way? So it really just depends on where we're at. So if they're on the reservation, obviously we'll be doing an operation in conjunction with Border Patrol because they're the ones that actually have the ability to enforce immigration

out there. Now, if they come into the county, then what we're looking for, obviously, is drugs. and human beings into coming into the country. So we work in conjunction with Border Patrol and ICE. They're amazing partners. We've had a great working relationship with them. And honestly, if we didn't have a good working relationship with all of our federal partners and local partners,

we wouldn't have near the success. And so we work together. So typically, if they're caught on the reservation and we're working with them, then most of the time the Border Patrol will take them back, probably take them back to Mexico, or wherever they came from. If we catch them in the county,

and let's say they're in possession of drugs when we catch them, then obviously we're going to book them into our jail for being in possession of drugs with intent to sell. If they don't have any drugs, then we have to just turn them back over to Border Patrol or ICE. What is the system that these cartel members use for when they're about ready to traffic something across the border? What are kind of the steps that they run from when they're still in Mexico

to once they're past the border? What is kind of their mode of operation? So one of the, that's a great question. You know, what their mode of operation is. One of the unique things that we deal with is it's not really unique to our county, but where they're trying to make it through the desert, most of the people we come in contact with are wearing camouflage clothes. They have a camouflage backpack.

They have carpet shoes, which is literally what it sounds like. They'll take a piece of carpet and fashion it into a, shoe that goes over your boot or your shoe and they'll wear those shoes because what it does it not only does it mask the sound of them traveling through the desert but it's hard to track them because they don't really love footprints so on one side they'll prepare the cartel will charge them and it can run in you know 3500 to 5,000 dollars to get over here to this side and they'll require that sometimes they'll require them to carry drugs as well and then they will give them you know a backpack some toilet trees and the carpet shoes and they'll have some camouflage clothes.

And we know it's kind of a standard issue because it's always the same type of equipment. It's always the same backpacks for the most part, same type of clothing. And they want to get into this country. And so it's a cat and mouse game. We have to try to track them down and they're trying to avoid being detected. What does that tracking down look like? What kind of things are you looking for and what kind of systems do you use to spot this and then to try to address it? So we use multiple things.

You know, we've got sensors. We use cameras. We also have a few helicopters here, and we have a plane that belongs to Border Patrol, but Border Patrol has allowed us to use it. And so we fly missions all the time. A lot of our success comes from our aviation unit. Obviously, from the air, we're able to see these folks a lot easier. But we also use the sensors, and we have an anti-smuggling unit that's dedicated

to stopping them. So sometimes you'll catch somebody and you'll work that person and hopefully they give you information as to when groups are coming across. So you, just like a drug case, you'll have people that might give you information or we just, they hit our sensors or one of our cameras and we try to get our guys over to that area as quick as possible to see if we can intercept them. How has the activity of the drug cartels, how does that affect, Arizonans, but also Americans across the country? Anytime you're trafficking human beings and drugs into a community, it has an effect. And it usually has an adverse effect.

Some of these women are being trafficked for sex here. Obviously the drugs, we've all seen the damage that these drugs are doing in America. The opioid epidemic was the cartel just, I mean, they made a gazillions of dollars off of that. and we, the people here in America, we paid the price for it. It used to be that somebody who was dealing with drug addiction in this country, it didn't happen to every family. Now every family has been touched in some way, shape, or form by the negative effects of drugs and how damaging they are on not only a person,

but on families and on communities. And so it's important for us that we stop it here in Arizona. Unfortunately, for everybody else in the country, Arizona is not where the cartel wants their product to end up. This isn't where they want the humans or the drugs to be because this is where they get the least amount of money for their product. They really want that product to go all throughout America. It's designed to make it to places like Ohio and Kentucky and Illinois

where the cost of the drugs goes up substantially and where you have higher rates of addiction to these drugs. So we don't just try to protect our communities here in Panau County or Arizona. we're actually trying to protect communities across this country because we're all in this fight together. You mentioned the problem of sex trafficking and also I've heard people talk about when people come over and have to pay cartel. Sometimes there's indentured servanthood that goes on when they have to pay the cartel back. So could you address those two problems, the sex trafficking situation as well as the indentured servanthood angle? Does that happen and what have you seen in relation to a threat?

those two different situations. You're exactly right. There's a lot of facets to it. So sometimes you'll have women that will pay to come into the country with sex. Sometimes you'll have women who will agree to be trafficked for a couple of years as their payment to come into this country. Sometimes you actually have people that pay the cartel and then they get here and then the cartel extorts them for more money and holds them ransom until their families pay more money than what they're. already paid. You know, $5,000 for somebody coming from Central America or Mexico is a lot of money. And then when they get here and they say, well, you owe us another $2,500. Several years ago, Phoenix was

actually the kidnapping capital of the world. And a lot of it was because they were finding these homes where 30 people would be holed up in a house in Phoenix because the cartel was holding them extorting them for more money. So there is, it's such a huge problem. And this is one of the things that we try to make people across this country aware of that it doesn't matter what political party you are or what you've heard on the media. If you care about human beings, you should absolutely care about border security because the cartel is abusing people and they're abusing people in our communities by bringing these drugs in. So recently, the Director of Customs and Border Patrol, Mark Morgan, he mentioned that 100 miles, I think, of border wall has been now set along in the U.S. Mexico border. Has the drug trafficking problem been affected by that at all? Or is that a completely different situation? No, I believe it's been affected. I think that this administration, not I

think, I know this administration's policies and the different things that they've done, the talks of doing some tariffs, that got Mexico to help in this issue. And we've definitely seen a reduction in not only the drugs coming in, but we've seen a reduction in the people. be in traffic. Does that mean it's stopped? No. We still have a big problem. But it's great to see an administration that's dedicated to protecting America and protecting our borders and understand how important border security is to this entire country. And that has helped us be able to do our mission better. And I think we've seen some results already, the reduction in drugs and people. So obviously what we're doing is working. So we've talked a lot about the drug problem at the border.

What is your perspective on other problems you see at the border? What are some major issues or problems that you see, you know, should be worked on next or addressed next? You know, I think you've got to first and foremost secure the border. I think that's so important to a lot of – it's not only important for keeping – for human rights, for keeping people from being trafficked by the cartel. It's not only important for keeping drugs out of our communities, but we've seen recent violence with the cartel. This is a national security issue too.

Being able to protect people here in America from those, that spillover of violence that the cartels are so intimately involved with, being able to protect our communities, our American citizens from that violence is paramount. And so border security has so much to it. So once we are able to secure those borders better, which I know is the goal, and it's going to take some time.

Then we're going to continue, we need to continue to support local law enforcement, which can assist border patrol on their missions. And we need to continue to take that fight to the cartels and hopefully weaken them to the point where we can start to really impact the flow of people and drugs in this country. You mentioned just now that the border security crisis,

it is a national security issue. Can you talk a little bit more about that and why it affects so many other fascinating? of American life? You know, we've been at war with ISIS for what, 20 years or different? But here in my communities, we're not worried about ISIS. You know what people are worried about? They're worried about their kids getting hooked on drugs.

They're worried about their daughter being trafficked for sex. They're worried about the violence from the cartels spilling over in their communities. They're worried about the violence that exist with local gangs that are predominantly. driven by the drug trade. These are the things that keep Americans up at night. So these are the national security things for us here. I've never, we've never once had a nicest issue here in this county. So we've got to focus on the things that my people worry about, the things that are affecting the families in not only our county, but across this country. And that's attacking the drugs and the human trafficking. Seeing what you experience every day in your line of four,

work, what is something that most surprises you or most frustrates you about what you do and what you witness from day-to-day experiences? It's going to sound pretty strong, but it doesn't surprise me, but I think what frustrates me is the ignorance that exists in Washington, when with a lot of people throughout this country, people that are supposed to know, people that are actually voting on these issues, the ignorance that they actually have to the real issues and their lack of motivation to come out and actually understand the problem. If I was dealing with an issue, if I was representing my community and there was an issue that I didn't understand, I would make an effort to go out and understand it so that I could make an intelligent vote on it.

Nothing frustrates us more in law enforcement than to watch these folks get on television and talk as if they know and they don't. and so I think that frustrates us. Luckily, we do have people in our corner fighting, and so that makes this, and look, in the end, we don't do this for the money. We do it because we love what we do, and we love our country, and we love our communities, and that's why we do this.

I wanted to get your perspective, too, on people's thoughts and perspective on Border Patrol. I was recently reading an article, I think it was in September 2019, actually the New York Times. It ran with the headline, people actively hate us inside the Border Patrol's Morale crisis. What is your perspective on this? And I'm sure you must see some of the state of day today.

So what are your thoughts on this? It's sad. It's sad that people think that of Border Patrol because these are good men and women that go out and do this job every day. I think a lot of people don't realize how much they care and what they do. We do a lot of humanitarian stuff. I think a lot of people would be surprised to understand how much time and resources we dedicate to saving people out in the desert. If you're in the desert and you call 911, it goes to Border Patrol.

Let's say somebody says, hey, you've got a group of 10 smugglers coming through. And they say, hey, this guy's not doing well. So we're going to leave them right here underneath this tree. Well, guess what? We care enough to where we actually go out and try to find that guy. And we understand it may be a diversion tactic. But a lot of times we get there. I'll give you an example.

We were with Border Patrol, and we got a 911 call for a guy that the cartel had left behind. His group kept going. When we finally did find him, which take us some time, he was laying underneath the Palo Verde tree. And we had to give him three bags of IV just to bring him back. They had left him basically for dead. While we were dealing with him and treating him, there was seven more 911 calls on the board for either. hurt or lost people smuggling from the smuggling groups. Seven more.

So they use it as a diversionary tactic. But regardless of that, those men and women have Border Patrol and those people that are working with them on their mission are dedicated to saving lives. And I think that people would be shocked to know how many lives they save every year. And then to be accused of not caring is honestly so irresponsible. and it's coming from the same people that we've elected throughout this country to represent us. It's reckless and irresponsible. Well, thank you for sharing that and giving us some really good perspective.

Going back to all the humanitarian work you all do, I know you said earlier today when we were talking that it varies from the time of year, but can you kind of talk about percentages about, you know, what happens during the summer and how much of that is humanitarian versus like winter months and spring, cooler months? And as well, can you address to, just how your resources are allocated and how things end up going towards humanitarian effort to win, in fact, if our systems were more reformed, we'd be going to actually secure the border. So we have several different things. We have our aviation unit, which we work a lot with Border Patrol through Stone Garden. We also have our anti-smuggling unit, which we work with Border Patrol and ICE.

We have guys attached to our anti-smuggling. And so we work. Those guys are dedicated to trying to stop the trafficking into this country. We spent a lot of resources, a lot of fuel for our helicopters. I have multiple helicopters in the plane, like I mentioned. So we spent a lot of resources. I only have so many pilots, so my pilots have to dedicate to that. Now, obviously for us, the busy times are going to be between probably about September, October,

through about March because the weather's cooler here in Arizona. And so it's a lot easier for them to travel. We have to do a lot more humanitarian work in the summer months because it's hot. And a lot of these people aren't prepared. And their equipment is lackluster. They're carrying a 50-pound pack of marijuana on their back, and it's like a rudimental two straps and a couple 25-pound bells tied up with bailing string. it's not something you get at REI.

You know, it's not a great backpack. So we spent a lot of time trying to help those people in the summer and trying to, at the same time, track these groups down that the cartel are using to smuggle people in and out. You had mentioned to earlier today when we were talking about that for an order for actual border security and reform to happen, there needs to be some sort of border security in Indian Reservation. What would that look like?

You know, we do a great job working together, and I know Border Patrol works very well together with the reservation. And then, you know, they're limited on their resources as well. We all are. We're all, and the cartel knows that. They know where our soft spots are, and they know where we're vulnerable. The reservation, you know, I'm sure they do the best job they can. I don't have any jurisdiction on the reservation unless my guys are working in conjunction with Border Patrol. but it's definitely

something that we have to constantly work together. Now, they fight an uphill battle because just like anywhere, they have members of their community who might assist the Border Patrol, or excuse me, who might assist the cartels in bringing those humans and the drugs into our country. So, you know, they're doing the best we can and we do the best we can to work with them,

but they are a sovereign nation, and I respect that sovereignty that they have. So last question, in the media coverage you see of the situation at the border, what would you say the media is not reporting about? Oh, I'd say the media is getting most of it wrong. You know, obviously Fox does a pretty decent job. I've seen a lot of their reports. I think that there's a lot of media that doesn't come out here. Like, I've been out here now for three years.

I've invited congressmen out. I've invited senators out. media to come out. I have yet to have CNN calling want to come out or any of these, some of these other places. And likewise, I've had only Republican senators and congressmen that have made the trip to come out and actually understand what the issues are that we're dealing with. And thank you to those men and women who have come out and seen it firsthand, because that's what enables us to be able to go do our job. So I would love to see more factual reporting, less bias. in what they're doing and really just come out and illustrate for the people what is the problem.

I go around and tell people, I speak around, and obviously I have people on both sides with both parties in my county. And I tell, put your politics aside, put what you side you've heard. I'm telling you as the sheriff of this county that we have issues with the cartel and we have border security issues they need to be addressed. Well, Sheriff Lamb, thank you so much for joining us today on the Daily Signal Podcast. Thank you. Thanks for having me. And thank you for coming down and seeing it yourself. You're one of those people that have taken the time and I appreciate it and kudos to you. Well, thank you. And that'll do it for today's episode.

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