Former President Donald Trump will travel to Arizona on Thursday morning to tour the U.S.-Mexico border, the Trump campaign announced over the weekend.
Trump will visit the border in Cochise County, which is part of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Tucson Sector.
So far in Fiscal Year 2024, the Tucson Sector has experienced 440,598 total migrant encounters, a 60.0 percent increase from Fiscal Year 2023’s encounters.
Last week alone, the U.S. Border Patrol working in the Tucson Sector apprehended 2,600 migrants, handled 199 federal criminal cases, stopped 27 human smuggling incidents, rescued 17 migrants in distress, intercepted narcotics on 7 separate occasions, and made four “significant” arrests.
U.S. Border Patrol personnel have encountered a total of 1,418,671 migrants – not including gotaways – along the U.S.-Mexico border in Fiscal Year 2024 so far.
In announcing the former president’s trip to the border, Trump’s campaign cited Vice President and now-Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris’ failed work as “border czar” for the “crisis” at America’s international borders.
“America is facing our country’s worst border crisis because of border Czar Kamala Harris. Despite nearly 10 million illegal immigrant crossings in the last three and a half years, at least 99 individuals on the terrorist watch list being released into our country, deadly drugs like fentanyl being peddled in by cartels and poisoning American communities, and a huge increase in crime and chaos caused by illegal immigrants — there is no end in sight for Kamala Harris’ border crisis,” the Trump campaign wrote in a press release.
In Arizona, Trump’s campaign went on to point out, “Over half of the total fentanyl pills that enter our country originate from the Arizona border.”
“In Maricopa County, more than three people die every day on average due to fentanyl,” Trump’s campaign said.
“President Donald J. Trump knows that the people of Arizona and the rest of the country cannot take another four years of a missing-in-action border Czar who refuses to act to secure our border and protect our country. President Trump will Make America Great Again by stopping the migrant invasion and carrying out the largest deportation operation in American history,” the former president’s campaign added.
Trump is expected to arrive in Cochise County on Thursday at approximately 11:30AM MST.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Arizona Sun Times and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
Photo “Donald Trump at the Border Wall” by Trump White House Archived.
