Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. today released a video documenting his second trip in six months to the southern border in Arizona, where he met with local stakeholders during a roundtable to learn firsthand the current status of the border crisis and how to solve this humanitarian crisis.
Today, the Kennedy campaign also launched a petition demanding President Biden secure the southern border.
“The humanitarian crisis at the border and the influx that’s coming in is an existential threat to our country and our values,” Kennedy said to kick off the roundtable on Feb. 6. “I want to focus today on what your ideas are on how we can stop this as quickly as possible.”
The roundtable was hosted by Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels and included mayors, attorneys, chiefs of police, medical professionals, chamber of commerce leaders, and a superintendent of schools, among others.
Kennedy was also interviewed by national and local press, toured the new multi-agency southern border operations center in Sierra Vista, and visited the border near Coronado National Memorial.
He learned how the drug cartel is coordinating “load car” drivers to get undocumented individuals into Tucson. Cochise County Attorney Brian McIntyre explained how drivers are recruited almost entirely through Snapchat, Instagram, and other social media sites. He said a 17-year-old kid from one of the top high schools in the area told him, “Everyone in my school knows this is how you make money.”
While at the border, Sheriff Dannels explained that when “President Biden took over he declared the southern border a non-emergency, which shut down all the developments on the border.”
One of the officers concluded, “It’s both sides of the aisle that just can’t come together with a common goal to go ‘let’s figure this out.’”
Sierra Vista Herald Managing Editor Matt Hickman echoed that sentiment. He said, “Another important thing to consider is how much of an enormous political football the border has become and how much of an impediment that is. At this very minute in Washington, DC, we’re just seeing political rancor, and I think it’s very important for independents like Mr. Kennedy to keep up the fight because only the voice of independents can make any kind of wedge in this issue.”
Kennedy’s first trip to the southern border was on June 6, 2023, when he visited Yuma, Arizona. He released “Midnight at the Border” to document that trip.
Kennedy’s border policy will:
- Secure the border and end the humanitarian and national security crisis
- Build wide gates for people who wish to enter the U.S. in a lawful, orderly manner
- Overhaul the asylum process, to swiftly clear the backlog of cases
- Deploy well-trained personnel and resources, including technologies that were installed at the border and then dismantled by the Biden administration, such as cameras, lights, and motion detectors, coupled with physical barriers in key areas
- Make passport cards available to any American citizen who can’t afford them
- Eliminate the influence of the criminal cartels that have turned immigration, drugs, and human trafficking into a multi-billion dollar business that victimizes both American citizens and immigrants themselves
- Work with Mexico and other countries to stem the tide of migrants
- End military adventurism and foreign policies that destabilize other countries, to stop the tide of outward migration
