‘Biden told them to come’: Arizona border town on brink of collapse from illegal immigration, officials say

Yuma, Arizona, is on the brink of collapse, city officials say, citing President Biden’s border policies that have led to a massive influx of illegal immigration into the region, as reported by FoxNews.

A Yuma official told the outlet that a wave of migrants crossing the border has overwhelmed food banks and hospitals, and accused the president of encouraging individuals to make the hike: “They come because they said Biden told them to come, that we have an open border,” said Jonathan Lines, Yuma County Supervisor.

“It’s only going to get worse with Biden’s policies,” the overseer said. “He needs to reevaluate.”

Lines described an “unprecedented crowd” of migrants crossing the border, unlike anything he had seen during his more than 30-year tenure in previous presidencies.

Local Yuma farmers told Fox News that foot traffic from migrants traveling through their fields is damaging crops, which they say make up over 90% of the country’s leafy greens.

“Our fields are monitored and checked and tested for various pathogens,” said a farmer named Alex Muller. “You can’t let people walk through the field,” he added.

Yuma, Arizona, has seen an unprecedented and massive increase in encounters at its border crossing under President Biden.

After US Customs and Border Protection, in 2020 there were only 8,437 encounters in land crossing. In 2021, under Biden, that number rose to a whopping 114,043. Then, in 2022, the number rose to 309,569.

Extrapolated to the border encounters in the first quarter of 2023, current trends would result in around 320,000 border encounters by the end of the financial year.

Image courtesy of US Customs and Border Protection – Nationwide Encounters – Southwest Land Border – Yuma Sector

“The problem that we foresee right now is that there are going to be some big waves coming,” another Yuma farmer and resident told Fox News. “Yuma can’t support that. It will overwhelm the system here,” the farmer claimed.

President Biden made his first trip to the southern border during his presidency in January 2023, visiting El Paso, Texas to enforce it Title 42which has the intended purpose of “suspending entries and imports from certain locations to prevent the spread of communicable diseases”.

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