A bipartisan group of New York county leaders is calling on President Biden to immediately address the “war zone” at the southern US border â which has fueled the ongoing migrant crisis in the Empire State.
The pols sounded the alarm two weeks after hearing horrific stories of human and drug smuggling during a trip to the US-Mexico border, where they witnessed a laughable lack of security and technology allowing thousands of people to pour in the US unvetted.
“The situation is dire,” New York State Association of Counties President Daniel McCoy, a Democrat, wrote in the scathing letter to Biden sent Tuesday and obtained by The Post.
The NYSAC outlined 10 issues that they say require “immediate attention” from Biden, including securing the border, adding more immigration judges, streamlining communications between the feds and local municipalities and fast-tracking paperwork.
“We urge you to prioritize addressing the migrant crisis and implementing comprehensive reforms to our immigration system,” McCoy wrote.
“The well-being of our communities, the dignity of migrants, and the bedrock ideals of the United States of America depend on swift and decisive action.”
The delegation said it was startled by the national security risk at the porous border barrier, which is manned by an understaffed US Border Patrol equipped with antiquated tech — such as cameras that only record in black and white.
At just one crossing in New Mexico, about 34,000 asylum seekers have entered the country since October, smuggled in by Mexican cartels. Border patrol agents have apparently been told to leave the area at night because it’s controlled by the cartels — meaning the feds have no idea where the people who were smuggled in are now or where they came from originally, the letter states.
“Our delegation met with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Officers and U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) Agents and saw and heard accounts of drug and human smuggling, gaps in physical border barriers, the nightly dangers of the ‘war zone’ of illegal crossings, the unknown number of individuals who escape capture every day and night, the lack of modern technology and equipment, and the Sisyphean efforts of USBP to protect our border communities,” McCoy wrote.
“It is evident that the current immigration system is failing to effectively deter illegal entry into the United States,” he added.
The letter comes as a direct response to the fact-finding trip — which included stops in El Paso, Texas and Mexico — that McCoy, the current Albany County executive, took with reps from Orange, Clinton, Erie, Oneida and Chautauqua counties in late March. It was organized by the National Association of Counties.
“Without consequences for illegal entry, the flow of migrants will not stop,” McCoy wrote in the letter to Biden.
“Policies must be implemented to ensure that consequences are enforced consistently and uniformly across both our southern and northern borders.”