Tuesday on Fox Business Network’s “Mornings With Maria,” Maricopa County, AZ Sheriff Joe Arapaio discussed the problems with illegal immigrants committing crimes in his community and why he thinks Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump is the best one to deal with this problem.
Arpaio also told host Maria Bartiromo of a statistic showing that over one-third of all the illegal immigrants he has incarcerated and turned over to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement wind up back in his jails.
Partial transcript as follows:
BARTIROMO: You are on the front lines, obviously, and your teams are on the front lines and you’re seeing what’s going and coming through the border. What’s your take on this most recent report? These people were in jail and they were released from jail and then they were convicted of murder.
ARPAIO: Well, you know, that’s been out for a while, but I have more shocking statistics that nobody will talk about except Neil Cavuto. He did bring it out.
BARTIROMO: Tell us about it.
ARPAIO: They are my statistics. I’ll tell you what it is, I also run the jails. We average about 9,000 people in the jails every day and every month they take statistics of those in our jails charged with all different crimes, here in this country illegally, 8,600 have been turned over to ICE for deportation and over 3000 keep coming back to the same jails that I run. Now, think of that. They keep coming back. One guy came back 20 times. So, what’s going on? Are they going to the border and keep hopping the fence or keep coming across or are they let out on the streets of Maricopa County? I think-
BARTIROMO: What do you think is happening? How is it possible that they were– that they’re coming back to your jails?
ARPAIO: Good question. I’ve written to the Homeland Security secretary, to other officials. I get bureaucrat particular responses. I never get an answer, but I got the facts. You’re talking about a hundred, that’s bad. But what about just in my jails, 39 percent keep coming back to the same jail and they are charged with many different crimes. So it’s very disgusting. Something has to be done about this illegal immigration problem.
BARTIROMO: What’s the answer though, sheriff? I mean, obviously, Donald Trump is talking about this wall that he’s going to build. Is that going to be enough? Is that going to be the solution or is there something else? I mean, this is clearly the dividing issue right now within this country.
ARPAIO: It’s very simple, you deport them. You get them out of our country. Why are they roaming the streets and keep coming back? They should be back in the country that they came from illegally. So, that’s very simple. You deport them and then you try to do something at the border.
BARTIROMO: Yeah, but Dagen, is it that simple though, just to deport 11 million people? I mean, this is the whole argument that we’re having right now. How can you deport all the illegals in this country right now?
ARPAIO: Well, I tell you what, we did pretty good just my office, I think, they accused me of 100,000 people leaving because of our crackdown during the past years. But it’s very simple. You deport them and when you come across those here committing other crimes, you lock them up and send them back where they came from. And that can be done. So why should we surrender the greatest country in the world, we can’t take care of this problem? So I support Trump and by the way, if you look at all the politicians here is what they say, ‘We must secure the border.’ Then they say ‘first,’ and then we’ll look at the internal problem. No, what about talking about those here illegally already? Why say secure the border first, you know the border will never be completely secure. I’ve been on both sides of that border as a top official. So, you can’t surrender. I like what Trump says. I had Bernie Sanders’ wife in my tent city last night and she learned something about, she didn’t like the tents. Her husband is here today in Phoenix, I’m sure he’ll bad-mouth me, but that’s OK.
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