The Biden-Harris administration’s “smoke and mirrors” border scheme has concealed the true extent of the immigration crisis amid the 2024 election season, San Diego County Supervisor Jim Desmond revealed during a Monday interview with Glenn Beck.
Between September 2023 and June 2024, the Border Patrol released more than 155,000 foreign nationals onto the streets of San Diego County, Desmond stated.
‘This isn’t about securing the border for the Feds — it’s about optics.’
Most of those individuals were dropped off at the Iris Avenue Transit Center, where they hitched a ride to their next destination deeper within the interior of the U.S. after being released by Border Patrol officials.
The Biden-Harris administration was torched for the street releases and the negative optics of using the train station as its main drop-off point for the San Diego Sector.
According to Desmond, the federal government started busing and flying immigrants to other border sectors to reduce the number of street releases in San Diego County.
“There’s about three buses a day that Border Patrol is taking migrants to Yuma, Arizona, which is right on the California-Arizona line. So about three buses per day, and they have about three or four flights per week, leaving San Diego going to Texas, primarily McAllen, Texas,” Desmond told Beck.
“It’s just smoke and mirrors. What they’re doing is they’re just taking these numbers, they’re no longer putting them on our streets, which was very in the open, and press and everything else had access to that, and they’re hiding them by busing them to Arizona or flying them to Texas,” he declared.
Desmond noted that the southern border numbers may be down over the past few months but only from “record highs.”
Border officials told Desmond that the agency planned to restart the street releases in San Diego County last Friday.
“So I think, unfortunately, we’re going to be back to the mayhem that we had in the previous months,” he told Beck. “That’s what I fear.”
He noted that, under the Biden-Harris administration, the San Diego Sector had become the number one spot for border crossings and fentanyl and “one of the top spots for human trafficking.”
Desmond also explained to Beck that several times per week boats packed with illegal aliens are running up onto the shores. The illegal immigrants then jump off the boats and flee on foot into nearby neighborhoods.
“They just abandon the boats on the beach. Those people aren’t even checked or go through Border Patrol. They’re not fingerprinted,” he stated. “That’s been happening for months.”
Desmond slammed the state’s sanctuary status, which prevents local law enforcement from cooperating with federal immigration officials.
“The state of California is a sanctuary state, which means our local law enforcement cannot enforce immigration laws. So even these people that are getting off the boats and walking into our neighborhoods, local law enforcement can’t do a thing about it,” he continued.
“There’s very little locally anybody can do about this,” Desmond added.
In a post on X, he wrote, “Border Patrol officials have informed me that street releases were set to resume again last Friday in San Diego County, adding to the more than 155,000 in the past year. But with the election around the corner, the Federal Government was worried about the optics, so every day, they’re bussing illegal immigrants from San Diego to Yuma, Arizona, to fly them across the country.”
“This isn’t about securing the border for the Feds — it’s about optics,” he concluded.
The Border Patrol did not respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.
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