Grand Canyon Times

Kari Lake, a U.S. Senate candidate in Arizona, said that the current administration's border policies have allowed drug cartels to gain "operational control" of the U.S. southern border. Lake shared her statement with Grand Canyon Times on October 9.

"Kamala Harris and Ruben Gallego have opened our borders and allowed terrorists, murderers, rapists, and traffickers to pour into our country," said Kari Lake, U.S. Senate Candidate. "They ripped open the most secure border in U.S. history and handed operational control of it to the cartels. We can't afford a President Harris or a Senator Gallego. I will fight alongside President Trump to secure our border and make our communities safe again."

According to a report, "Despite its responsibilities for overseeing UCs [unaccompanied migrant children] through the immigration process, we found ICE cannot always monitor the location and status of UCs once they were released from DHS and HHS custody."

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) reported that their docket currently includes over 662,000 illegal immigrants with criminal convictions or pending criminal charges. This information was conveyed in a letter sent by ICE Deputy Director Patrick Lechleitner to Republican U.S. Representative Tony Gonzales. Among these individuals are over 13,000 convicted murderers, more than 15,000 convicted of sexual assault, and thousands of others convicted of violent crimes such as kidnapping and assault.

According to the National Review, it took ICE six months to respond to Representative Gonzales' request.

Lake is running for U.S. Senate in Arizona, as noted by Ballotpedia. She is a former journalist who previously ran for Governor of Arizona in 2022.

A Fox News report disclosed that the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement has lost track of over 32,000 unaccompanied migrant children over the last five years. An internal source at DHS sent a report titled "Management Alert - ICE Cannot Monitor All Unaccompanied Migrant Children Released from DHS and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Custody" to Congress. The report indicated that while ICE transferred more than 448,000 unaccompanied children to the Department of Health and Human Services from 2019 to 2023, it could not account for many who were released and subsequently failed to appear at their immigration court hearings.