MSNBC’s Ronan Farrow reported that the Arizona-Mexico Border was “lawless” on Friday’s “Jose Diaz-Balart.”
Farrow, who is in Tuscon after visiting the border, said, “The thing that you’re struck by being on the border is there is no securing it, in any complete sense. This is a vast swath of border land. Just in Arizona alone it’s almost 300 miles that they’re charged with securing in the border patrol. And it is the Wild West, literally. It is lawless, it is vast tracts of extremely dangerous terrain where people die of heat and dehydration. And it’s a lawless land where smugglers and dangerous elements also profligate. So, what we saw is it takes a tremendous amount of resources our here, for these very brave officers who are trying to secure the border and that there is never a complete or perfect answer.”
He added, “all we can do is try to treat the individuals coming across in exactly the right way. Both bringing justice, in cases where there are criminal elements, and also giving people their rights in the correct way when their family is struggling to get across the border. When it’s sick people, when it’s dying people.”
He also described drug smugglers along the border as “dangerous individuals and they’re highly trained. Some of these smuggling routes have been passed from generation to generation. And they’ve gotten very adept at evading security forces and oftentimes attacking them. A lot of officers that we talked to have had run-ins of a physical nature. Which, [are carried out by] some of these extremely fit, by their description, smugglers, people who know how to attack a Border patrol officer. He further said the Border Patrol is “careful not to demonize these individuals. The smugglers are in desperate straits, too,” but re-iterated that they are “extremely dangerous oftentimes.” He also said that Border Patrol agents have great “empathy” for those trying to cross the border.
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