Terrell County, Texas Sheriff Thaddeus Cleveland spoke to Fox News Channel about the state of the U.S. southern border on Wednesday, defending his state’s move to arrest suspected illegal immigrants and ripping President Biden for doing nothing to deal with the migrant crisis.
"America’s Newsroom" anchor Bill Hemmer prompted the discussion by asking Sheriff Cleveland about SB 4, a controversial law that the Supreme Court allowed Texas to enforce yesterday, allowing officials to arrest migrants suspected of crossing the border illegally.
As Hemmer laid out, the law was challenged by the Biden Justice Department in January, and blocked by a U.S. District court in February until it was allowed to go into effect by the U.S. Supreme Court this week.
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Most recently, the law was put on hold again by a federal appeals court, and a 5th circuit court will hear arguments in the case on Wednesday.
Hemmer asked Cleveland about arguments that SB 4 will allow the state government to racially profile people, and followed up by asking how exactly the government would figure out who is illegal.
Cleveland added there’s been "a lot of rhetoric that we’ll be targeting people from Mexico, Mexicans."
"Your viewers need to know that the US-Mexico border is no longer the US-Mexico border. It's the US world border. People from all over the world are exploiting the border here to make entry into the United States illegally," he said.
He insisted that properly identifying illegal migrants is "something that local law enforcement can be trained on – state law enforcement can be trained on," with the federal government’s help.
However, he clarified that the Biden administration won’t be offering help.
"And then working with the federal government, of course, not with this administration, because they refuse to work with Governor Abbott on this issue," he said. "They refuse to work with local law enforcement, but those local law enforcement can be trained and work with our federal partners."
Hemmer then asked if the sheriff would know exactly where to go to arrest illegal immigrants if the law was in effect now.
"Oh, 100%," he replied, adding, "And we just hit another busy street. Yesterday we had five active groups. We had two Texas Department of Public Safety helicopters here working with us in the county."
Elsewhere in the interview, Hemmer invited Cleveland to respond to White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre’s recent criticisms of SB 4, that it would "not only make communities in Texas not safe, it will also burden law enforcement, and sow chaos and division at our southern border."
"First and foremost, that chaos and confusion was created by this administration," the sheriff said. "Look, back in fiscal year 20, we ended that year with 400,000 illegal alien apprehensions. After the Biden administration came over, that's when we saw the dismantling of the border within about six months.
"They completely wiped out the Trump policies that actually made this border more safe and secure, and not just with President Trump, but also the prior four administrations, as I've mentioned many times."
