SIERRA VISTA, Ariz.—With less than a week to go before the Nov. 8 election, Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and Republican Senate candidate Blake Masters spoke to the media at the southern border.
“This is the material that you and I paid for,” Lake said, while pointing to border wall construction material that was lying on the ground. “When I’m governor, my plan calls to take that back and start finishing the wall, This is outrageous that it’s sitting here rusting.”
She said she would declare the material “abandoned federal property,” and if elected, she'll “take it back” and “start constructing President [Donald] Trump’s wall.”
That will help slow illegal crossings, which will help the Border Patrol, Lake said. And once caught, Lake wants to send illegal immigrants back across the border, not deeper into the United States.
Earlier in the day, during a Facebook Live event, Lake pointed out that school nurses nowadays have Narcan, an emergency overdose injection, instead of just Band-Aids. She also said that because of the porous southern border, drugs are flowing in unchecked and children as young as a year old have died from drug poisoning. She said that if elected, she wants to “stop the cartels and the drugs and smugglers from pouring across our border.”
“We are going to take an aggressive approach to our border. Article 1, section 10 of the Arizona Constitution defines Arizona by its border. This is Arizona’s border, and we’re going to protect Arizona’s border,” she said. “If we don’t secure our border here, every sheriff around this country has to deal with the ramifications of that.”
Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb joined Lake at the border event. He said what he sees at the border is an “invasion” by the cartels.
Lamb noted that a common argument against building a physical wall is that technology is sufficient. But, in addition to not completing the wall, President Joe Biden decided to never turn on the available technology, he said.
As a result, Lamb said counties such as his and others across the country are affected by increased human trafficking, drugs, and cartels.
Masters said his opponent, Sen. Mark Kelly (R-Ariz.), conceded that the southern border is a mess. But instead of doing something about it, Kelly has voted in lockstep with Biden’s open border policies.
Masters said he won’t vote “for a single thing that Biden wants, not a single piece of funding, not a continuing resolution, not a single appointee, unless and until he agrees to give us some border security.” He said this is the leverage that Kelly has had but hasn’t used.
However, instead of a wall, Kelly wants “advanced technology and staffing at the border, upgrading ports of entry, more immigration judges, fencing and barriers where they make sense, and modernizing our legal immigration system to set up Arizona’s economy for success and keep families together.”
Masters said that starting on Jan. 3, 2023, he‘ll do everything he can at the federal level to secure the border. Pointing to Lake, he said they’ll work together to “take care of business” at the state and federal levels.
Lake said she’s a humanitarian. Because Biden “rolled out the welcome mat,” people are dying in the desert trying to come to the United States illegally. Lake noted that part of being a humanitarian means fixing the border. It also means taking care of the needs of Arizonans first and foremost.
Hobbs, Kelly, and White House officials didn’t respond to requests by The Epoch Times for comment by press time.
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