Texas sheriffs say open border causing a ‘tsunami of death’

A quartet of Texas sheriffs took aim at President Biden this week, telling The Post his laissez-faire border policies are creating a tragic tidal wave of smuggled drugs.

“It’s quite frankly a tsunami of death that is crashing into the United States over our southern border,” Collin County Sheriff Jim Skinner said of the thousands of pounds of fentanyl that Mexican drug cartels trafficked into the Lone Star State.

“It’s killing Americans wholesale and it’s just an epic slaughter manufactured by the cartels. If you don’t secure the border it’s going to continue.”

Skinner was joined by Lone Star lawmen Rand Henderson of Montgomery County, Javier Salazar of Bexar County, and Bill Waybourn of Tarrant County on an exclusive Zoom call with The Post.

Fentanyl is now the leading cause of death for Americans between the ages of 18 and 45, according to one analysis. A total of 107,622 people died of overdoses in the U.S. in 2021, with the overwhelming majority caused by synthetic opioids like fentanyl, according to the Centers for Disease Control. The drug is frequently brought into the United States from Mexico and China.

Skinner said there has been a 571% increase in fatal fentanyl poisonings in his county. In nearby Tarrant County, home to Fort Worth, Waybourn said he had seized enough Fentanyl to kill 400,000 people.

“There has been copious amounts of dope that has come across the border. It’s unbelievable the things that are rolling across,” Waybourn said.

All four men said they felt Washington, DC was not taking their concerns seriously and cited as evidence a planned meeting with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas during a swing through Texas this week. An original 90 minute meeting was canceled after Mayorkas’ team said he could only spare half that time for the lawmen, they said. (Reps for Mayorkas disputed that and said the meeting fell apart due to scheduling conflicts.)

Some of the sheriffs would have had to drive six hours across the state to attend the planned meeting in San Antonio and said the curtailed meeting was an insult.

“He was just placating us,” growled Waybourn.

Mayorkas instead spent Thursday at Eagle Pass, Texas, meeting with Border Patrol agents.

“DHS regularly reaches out to and engages law enforcement and first responders all over the country including state, local, tribal, territorial and campus law enforcement agencies. One of our most critical missions is sharing information on matters affecting the security of the homeland, learning from and helping communities prepare and prevent man-made threats or natural disasters, and to coordinate operations where our jurisdictions intersect,” a rep for the agency said.

Henderson ripped the job Biden and Mayorkas are doing at the border.

“When the Biden administration came into office, they winnowed down the number of offenses that would be considered for deportation,” he said, adding that he had hoped to press the secretary on ridding the country of criminal illegal aliens.

“If we have criminals operating in our community that can be deported, I think we need to take advantage of that. This administration under Mayorkas’ leadership has chosen not to,” he said.

Salazar said the planned visit came after months of “strongly worded” calls and letters from him about the border situation — which for him has meant a flood of migrants who are often “dumped like yesterday’s trash in the middle of our county.”

Salazar said some of his letters in the past had warned about the migrants being hauled into the country on large trucks and the dangers that posed. In June at least 53 migrants were found dead inside a large tractor trailer near Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio.

“I’m a Democrat. I am actually on the side of President Biden on this, but all the same you need to come down to Texas to get an eye on this thing and you really need to see the magnitude of it personally,” Salazar said. “Give me some task force agents, give me some intel analysts. I Know it exists. I know they have got them in the federal system.”

The sheriffs were sharply divided over the state’s controversial decision to send busloads of illegal migrants into New York City. Salazar said it was “cold blooded … to take advantage of somebody in a desperate situation to make a point and teach the New Yorkers a lesson.” He added that he believed many of the migrants were not being told where they were going.

But the Republican sheriffs largely lined up behind Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who initiated the controversial program.

“I think they just made New York a border city,” observed Waybourn. “So maybe it will create some empathy and as a nation we can come together.”