Montana Sheriff Shares Eye Opening Numbers from Southern Border
Lewis and Clark County, Montana has been getting hit with a wave of overdoses cases involving fentanyl. And where is the deadly fentanyl coming from? It's coming from across our Southern Border.
We caught up with Lewis and Clark Sheriff Leo Dutton from the Western States Sheriff's Association convention in Reno, Nevada on Tuesday morning. (For any of you who are new to Montana and have been watching the hit TV show Yellowstone- yes there is a Dutton family in Montana, yes there is a Sheriff Dutton, and yes he grew up on the Dutton Ranch in Eastern Montana)
Sheriff Dutton is the current president of the Western Sheriff's Association. As a result, he gets to hear directly from the southern border sheriffs. He also received a briefing from the US Border Patrol this week during their national convention, and shared some of the eye opening numbers on Tuesday's "Montana Talks with Aaron Flint."
Sheriff Dutton: Since October 2021 to January, they have had 670,000 encounters. They've had assaults on agents have been up 29%. The countries just in the last little bit- 142 countries, 164 deaths. Now, in just a short time, they've had 1000 pounds of cocaine, 400 pounds of fentanyl, and 100 pounds of heroin...We have to do something about the border and we have been begging the current administration to do something to actually actively engage
It's also worth pointing out that the Western Sheriff's Association said that "the current illegal immigration crisis is spiraling out of control." And that was in 2014. What is happening now is an illegal immigration crisis on steroids. Sheriff Dutton says Russians have also been caught crossing our border illegally.
Full audio with Sheriff Dutton from Reno: