As Texas authorities button-up a longtime border influx point at Eagle Pass, the shift of migrant flows to a treacherous mountain in California suggests policies by leaders in Sacramento have failed, one border-county sheriff told Fox News.
Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb, a Republican who is also running in the primary to potentially face Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., and Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., said his western neighbors have "lost their mind" on border policy.
"It doesn't help the rest of us when they do silly things like that when they offer free sex changes, free health care, free housing;. All that does is entice people to come here, and we don't need that," Lamb told "Jesse Watters Primetime" Monday.
Lamb was reacting to reports of a migrant influx at Jacumba Hot Springs, Calif., where the border lacks a fence partially because the official boundary is the peak of an imposing, very steep mountain.
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Fox News national correspondent Bill Melugin witnessed a steady stream of migrants making the treacherous journey over the escarpment and into a small flat area adjacent to Interstate 8.
Many of the thousands of migrants in recent months in that area hailed from China. A CBS News report cited some with rolling luggage and reportedly spoke to one college graduate migrant who had flown from China to Ecuador due to its lack of visa requirements, and then on to Tijuana, which lies just across from San Diego.
Lamb claimed there have been 37,000 Chinese nationals to cross the border in the past year, and that the current rate is on pace to hit 20,000 over the past four months.
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He warned, however, that these migrant flows may be different than those from other countries, as America's chief economic rival has a very different governmental system than nations in Central America and elsewhere.
"What I keep telling people, when you hear these numbers about Chinese nationals, it's not like America -- people can't just come and go as they please out of a Communist country. The Chinese government has to be complicit in this," Lamb said.
"And so when you see it, the number like 20,000 in the first four months, that is very alarming, especially when they're military-age men."
Host Jesse Watters also shared video from independent journalist Nick Shirley, who captured hidden camera footage of the posh and formerly-public Row Hotel in New York, which has been converted to a migrant-only establishment.
Shirley reported such hotels have signed contracts with "outside sources" that pay the migrants' rents at an estimated rate of $200 per night, which would work out to $7.2 million a month according to the reporter.
"I don't know when Americans are going to wake up that those are our tax dollars paying for those rooms," Lamb said in response.
The sheriff said he flew in a helicopter over the border region earlier Monday and witnessed several of what he characterized as "NGO camps" that also included tent structures "full of trash."
