An Arizona rancher with remote land on the leading edge of the unfinished southern border wall told Fox News Digital that he has encountered thousands of illegal immigrants entering the U.S. under the Biden-Harris administration and worries that many of them have ties to drug cartels or are coming from the Middle East.
He said cameras are capturing hundreds of illegal immigrants each day slipping through the edge of the border wall and into the U.S., and he criticized Vice President Harris’ tenure as President Biden’s immigration chief.
“She’s the border czar. She’s always been the border czar, but she’s completely failed when it comes to stopping people from coming into our country,” said Jim Chilton, an Arizona rancher who owns 50,000 acres of land that includes former President Trump’s unfinished border wall.
“For the last six months, we’ve had an average of about 100 people a day coming from Mexico to that end of the wall,” he told Fox News Digital. And they’re not hiding: Some are accompanied by drug cartel smugglers and wear camouflage clothing and carpet shoes to try to avoid detection, he said.
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On June 25, 2021, Vice President Harris visited the El Paso Central Processing Center in Texas, near the U.S.-Mexico border. (Reuters/Evelyn Hochstein)
“Their numbers aren’t going down,” he said. “I came across a group of about 12 on Saturday. They appeared to be from the Middle East and were in bad shape.”
He gave them water and reported the incident to the nonprofit Samaritans, which also notified the Border Patrol.
Still images from a motion-detecting surveillance camera show a group of camouflaged people bypassing an unfinished section of southern border wall and sneaking onto an Arizona rancher’s property in May 2024. (Courtesy of Jim Chilton)
“Vice President Harris, you’re not patrolling the border. I heard you say it’s safe. But it’s not safe. We need to have border security at the border. We’re a sovereign nation.”
Chilton has installed five motion-sensing cameras throughout the ranch — one for every 10,000 acres.
“Since Biden was elected and took office, there have been 3,550 people captured on camera tracking my movements,” he said.
These people have been seen wearing camouflage clothing and tying pieces of carpet to their shoes to try to hide, he said, and he estimated that another 5,000 people crossed his property in April alone without any attempt at hiding.
Still images from a motion-detecting surveillance camera show a group of camouflaged people bypassing an unfinished section of southern border wall and sneaking onto an Arizona rancher’s property in May 2024. (Courtesy of Jim Chilton)
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While Harris and her supporters have distanced themselves from the border crisis and rejected the label “border czar,” the House of Representatives formally censured her last week.
“We have become a garbage dump for the world, and we are not going to put up with it any more.”
At a campaign rally last Wednesday, President Trump called her an “architect of the border invasion” and blamed the current administration for the record increase in illegal immigration, pointing to a graph that showed the number of illegal immigrants hitting an all-time low at the end of his administration and then hitting an all-time high in March of this year under the Biden-Harris administration.
An illegal immigrant suspect in the murder of a Texas girl was recently arrested by the Border Patrol and released into the US.
“She inherited the best border in American history and turned it into the worst border in the world,” he said, adding that the administration has halted construction of a border wall, defended sanctuary cities and put an end to Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy.
President Trump cited recent warnings from the Department of Homeland Security that the Venezuelan prison gang “Tren de Aragua” is targeting police for assassination, as well as a number of high-profile crimes against women and girls across the country, including the recent murder of 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray of Houston, who was sexually assaulted, strangled and thrown off a bridge. Police have arrested two illegal immigrants from Venezuela in connection with the murder.
“If I’m elected, on day one I’ll begin the largest deportation campaign in the world,” Trump said.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump held a campaign rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania on July 31, 2024. (Reuters/Elisabeth Franz)
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For victims’ families like Jocelyn and ordinary citizens like Chilton, evidence of failures at the border is part of everyday life.
Chilton noted that in the event of an emergency, it can take anywhere from 45 minutes to more than an hour for officers to arrive at a home in a remote location.
“We have no real law enforcement, so we have to defend ourselves just like my ancestors had to defend themselves,” he said. “I’m outraged. My border is 5.5 miles long, and Trump’s wall goes 5 miles past that. And the wall ends on my ranch.”
Still images from a motion-detecting surveillance camera show a group of camouflaged people bypassing an unfinished section of southern border wall and sneaking onto an Arizona rancher’s property in May 2024. (Courtesy of Jim Chilton)
Now, he said, “drug cartel scouts” roam the mountains, directing people away from detection. They might bring terrorists or criminals, he said.
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Another wave of “economic migrants” is also arriving, but they’re not trying to hide, he said. They’re entering the US around the edge of the wall, deliberately hoping to expose themselves to encounters with Border Patrol.
“The economic migrants they want arrested come from all over the world,” Chilton said. “I think 12 of the people I met last Saturday were from the Middle East. They looked Syrian to me. There are a lot of them from Africa, Bangladesh, India from all over the world. It’s unbelievable.”
Fox News Digital has reached out to Harris for comment.
Fox News’ Brooke Kurt contributed to this report.
