Exclusive – Arizona Republican Kari Lake: ‘We’re Going to Secure that Border’

Kari Lake with inset of Tucson border sector
LM Otero/AP; U.S. Border Patrol/Tucson Sector

Arizona’s Republican gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake spoke with host Matthew Boyle on Sirius XM’s Breitbart News Saturday about the crisis at the southern border and her plans to secure the border if she is elected governor on Tuesday.

On Friday, Lake, Republican Senatorial nominee Blake Masters, and GOP candidates for attorney general and secretary of state, Abe Hamadeh and Mark Finchem, went to the border in Cochise County. Lake, a former Fox 10 Phoenix anchor, noted that the area is a haven for “gotaways,” or illegal immigrants who do not want to be processed.

Border agents struggle to keep immigrants from illegally crossing Arizona border. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

“Cochise County, and what they call the Tucson sector, is where the majority of the so-called ‘gotaways’ come through,” said Lake. “And you know, we’ve had more than 5 million people come here illegally; a million of them are gotaways. These are the people who have such bad backgrounds that they don’t want to be processed. A lot of the people coming want to be processed for asylum, etc.; these are the people who are so dangerous they don’t want to be processed, and they’re coming through this area.”

Lake then emphasized how Arizona children are subjected to the dangers of human and drug trafficking that take place regularly at the border.

A display of the fentanyl and meth that was seized by Customs and Border Protection officers over the weekend at the Nogales Port of Entry is shown during a press conference on Thursday, Jan. 31, 2019, in Nogales, Ariz. As the number of U.S. overdose deaths continues to soar, states are trying to take steps to combat a flood of the drug that has proved the most lethal -- illicitly produced fentanyl. (Mamta Popat/Arizona Daily Star via AP, File)

A display of the fentanyl and meth that was seized by Customs and Border Protection officers over the weekend at the Nogales Port of Entry is shown during a press conference on Thursday, Jan. 31, 2019, in Nogales, Ariz. (Mamta Popat/Arizona Daily Star via AP, File)

“They are targeting our children in other parts of Arizona through social media, encouraging them to come down and start helping with the smuggling of … people here illegally by driving them. And so our children are being targeted on social media, ‘Hey, make a quick 1000 bucks or 5000 bucks. Come on down, we’ll provide the car, we’ll provide the gas, all you have to do is drive these people who are coming through illegally to Phoenix.’ They’re targeting our children that way, the drugs pouring across. We had a mother and father who lost their son when he took what he thought was a Tylenol three that a neighbor gave him, and it was laced with fentanyl. It is just completely an invasion. And it is an effort by the CCP, the communists in China, working through the Mexican cartels to poison our young people in America.”

LISTEN:

Breitbart · Kari Lake – November 5, 2022

To combat the lawlessness at the southern border, Lake pledges to “immediately” declare an invasion if elected.

“This is truly an invasion, and we have legal law to set us up,” said Lake. “Our attorney general, Mark Brnovich … made a great statement saying that we truly do have an invasion, and you can use that to protect your border,” said Lake. “And so we’ve got that, we’ve got Governor Ducey, who has been putting some barriers up, and he’s already in a battle with the federal government. I believe we’ll win this battle because it is our border, it is the Arizona border, and our state is defined by our border. In Article One, Section One of our Arizona Constitution, it defines the state of Arizona by our borders, and so we can protect those borders. It’s state property, we’re arguing, not federal property, that border, because of what it says in our Arizona Constitution.”

Lake noted that her plan also includes halting “all environmental laws along the border during this emergency.”

“This is a health emergency; think about it,” she explained. “The poison coming across with fentanyl is killing more young Americans than any other cause of death. So you know, the ocelots and squirrels and crickets are going to have to take a little break while we get our borders under control because that’s what the EPA, you know, the environmentalists will argue — ‘We can’t secure the border because the crickets and the bugs are going to be hurt.’ Well, they’re going to have to wait for a bit because we are seeing our people being hurt in Arizona and across this country. And so we’re going to secure that border. We have many ways and many tools in the toolbox to address what’s happening at the border and secure it. And when we don’t have the right tool, we’ll do a MacGyver tool. And we’ll make one to make sure that we can secure this border.”

The Republican nominee earlier highlighted how important electing other Republicans in statewide races is to securing the border and enacting her plan.

“It’s horrifying what we saw and heard in Cochise County yesterday, and we had the whole Republican ticket with us,” noted Lake. “We need Blake to go back to the United States Senate and push back against the overreach of the federal government, free up some money so we can, for sure, you know, secure our border. We’ve got to have Abe Hamadeh so that my border plan can go through; I’ve got to have an AG fighting along with me. And we really need Mark Finchem in there as Secretary of State. He’s running against a Marxist who was the lawyer for the cartels in the Fast and Furious case.”

Arizona Secretary of State Republican candidate Mark Finchem listens to instructions prior to debating Democratic challenger Adrian Fontes on Sept. 22, 2022, in Phoenix. (Matt York/AP)

Breitbart News Saturday airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Eastern.

COMMENTS

Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.