Walls work, says Arizona sheriff who claims crime dropped by 91 percent thanks to border fence

As Washington, D.C. debates whether or not a wall will stop the flow of illegal immigration from Mexico to the United States, one Arizona county sheriff says it led to a dramatic 91 percent reduction in crime. “The fence worked here. It may not work in New Mexico, I can only talk about my area. But [politicians should] defer to the Border Patrol experts,” Yuma County Sheriff Leon Wilmot told Fox News. “They know the situation.” In 2006, President George W. Bush passed the Secure Fence Act which had a tremendous impact in Yuma County. In 2015, Fox News reported a 96 percent reduction in apprehensions due to a 20-foot tall steel fence and manpower being tripled. Wilmot was a deputy during that time but saw the impact firsthand. “It was a 91 percent drop,” Wilmot said. “It obviously helped us curb some of the criminal activity that we unfortunately had to deal with.” The 91 percent reduction in crime Wilmot cites is a Sheriffs office number. According to Wilmot, service calls and arrests dropped dramatically between 2005-2009 leading to the conclusion that added fencing along with more manpower had a major impact on local crime. According to Wilmot this number also includes immigration-related arrests and apprehensions that Sheriff's deputies would have made and crimes committed against smuggling victims. “When they were no longer able to take advantage of our border as a smuggler’s paradise, the crimes against those being smuggled virtually stopped,” Wilmot said. Data from the U.S. Border Patrol also shows that since 2005, total illegal alien apprehensions dropped from 138,438 to 12,847 in 2017. It was as low 5,833 in 2011...MORE