Leah Barkoukis
Town Hall
April 13, 2014
Near the U.S.-Mexico border, the federal government has posted signs warning passersby that the area they are in is not safe, as they’re entering an “active drug and human smuggling area.” Sheriffs in Arizona even admit that parts of the state are in fact controlled by Mexican drug cartels.
But the dangerous problems associated with the cartels—drug and human trafficking, kidnapping, prostitution, violence, money laundering—are now reaching places in the United States far beyond the Border States.
“If we fail to secure our borders, then every sheriff in America will become a border sheriff,” said Sam Page, sheriff of Rockingham County, N.C., reports the Washington Times. “We’re only a two-day drive from the border and have already seen the death and violence that illegal crossings brings into our community.”
In Sheriff Page’s county, cartels have set up one of their drug warehouses very close to his home, and they’ve got even more firepower than he does. “I’m literally outgunned,” he says.