We begin today with the U.S. border crisis. Four years ago, we were there when construction on the border wall was abruptly halted overnight after President Biden took office. That was followed by a history making spike in illegal immigration, drugs, and human trafficking. In recent days, as Donald Trump was being sworn in, we headed back to the Arizona-Mexico border to see if there would be any immediate changes at ground zero under Trump 2.0.

The following is a transcript of a report from “Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson.”
Watch the video by clicking the link at the end of the page.

We’re heading out with Deputy Dan Brennan of the Criminal Interdiction Team in Cochise County, Arizona. As dark falls, he spots a rental car from Oregon whose travels— documented through an elaborate tracking system— seem suspicious.

Two illegal immigrants from Mexico and an alleged smuggler from California.

Sharyl: Has the human smuggling been pretty steady?

Dan Brennan: It’s always been an ever present theme. It kind of rose to the level of epidemic in the more recent years, you know, at levels that shocked everybody that had been around a while. But it’s never not been present. It’s never not been a theme here in Cochise County.

It’s the first full day of the Trump presidency— and change is coming to the beleaguered Southern border.

The wheels set in motion by President Trump.

President Donald Trump (January 20): First, I will declare a national emergency at our southern border. All illegal entry will immediately be halted, and we will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came.

Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels.

Mark Dannels: So Sharyl four years ago, this was the location where one of half a dozen locations in Cochise County, that was like a little city. It had cement plant, it had 24/7 operations to build the physical barrier. It was something, from working the roads from electrical, you name it. This was a bustling little place.

Sharyl: So you remember we had already planned our trip here and when we got here four years ago, we discovered that work had stopped overnight on border wall construction?

Dannels: President Biden with his executive order declaring this a non-emergency, shut it all down. It froze in time and what you see is what’s left. And then, the fencing wall that sat here for the last four years.

Sharyl (on-camera): These stacks of metal are actual border pieces of border wall that were paid for and ready to install four years ago when the Biden administration brought everything to a sudden halt.

Dannels: Look at the money sitting here.

Sharyl: So you think they’ll use this now?

Dannels: Yes. Yep. There’s no reason not to. This was all under, this has been sitting here since Trump left office the first time.

But Dannels says the past two months, some of the border wall parts were sold off for pennies on the dollar.

Rancher Kelly Kimbro also saw that firsthand. She owns the Malpai Ranch along the border.

Sharyl: When you heard that parts of the border wall were being sold off in the last recent weeks, what were your thoughts?

Kelly Kimbro: My thoughts were that the administration leaving Washington was kind of putting the screws to the administration coming in because that’s costing you and I a lot of money. All those bollards say you have sat on our property for four years. They were built, they were panels. The eight foot wide, 30-foot-tall panels. They’d been there for four years. Coolidge, Arizona had a yard full for miles of bollards and bollard panels, Guadalupe Canyon had they, so then they started hauling ’em and all of a sudden we were seeing semis just round the clock, hauling ’em out.

Sharyl: Off your property?

Kimbro: Off our property and off Guadalupe Canyon.

Detective Cody Essary is with the Sheriff’s SABER Team, Southern Arizona Border Region Enforcement. They use technology from New Mexico to California to catch illegal border crossers.

Sharyl: What have you seen the past four years compared to the previous four?

Cody Essary: Oh, astronomical. During the Trump administration, the most that we would see— like I said, we have a camera system all along the southwest border— The most we would see in a month is maybe 800 to 900 people coming across on our camera system. There were months in the Biden administration, we were seeing eight to 9,000. And that’s just on our camera system.

He says since border enforcement was largely abandoned, roads built to catch drug traffickers crossing here at Montezuma Pass in Arizona have become unusable.

Sharyl: These cuts were a passable road where you could patrol and interdict?

Essary: Exactly. Exactly. And that was one of the purpose of the Trump administration and building the wall and making those roads is if an agent needed to respond to that ridge line up there, he could. But if an agent today needed to go to the other side of that ridge line from here, it would take him an hour and a half going around the mountain range to get to that other side.

In this part of Arizona, illegal border crossers aren’t trying to be caught and get lost in the system like so many others. Here, they’re smuggling fentanyl and other drugs, and people and will evade at most any cost. Killer cartels— now declared foreign terrorist organizations under President Trump— have earned mind boggling profits by moving record amounts of drugs and people across the porous southern border.

Kimbro: 45 years ago, our family found the first load of drugs on the Mexican border at our ranch. That’s a long time for something not to work.

Under President Trump’s new emergency order — many foresee a fresh start.

Dannels: I had the opportunity on behalf of National Sheriff Association to be part of Biden’s transition team. Well, I briefed him on all this and talked to him about border security. Within a week that was rescinded. He declared the Southwest border, a non-emergency, which means it froze funding or froze technology or froze everything in time. So for the last four years, the border’s been the same. Nothing’s changed down there.

Sharyl: Now what will you get in terms of will funding open again? Will technology be available that wasn’t before? Because there’s now a state of emergency again.

Dannels: It will, it opens up that funding line. It opens up the opportunity, innovation, creativity, to complete the wall, the physical barrier, which does work. I don’t care what people say, it does work.

Sharyl: Is there any way to anticipate or predict what might be the strategy or actions of the cartels if they think the border is gonna be tightened up now?

Dannels: Well, it’s just new strategies. They just need to renegotiate what President Trump’s new plans are and how they get around that. But now they have a coach on America’s side that’s actually going after ‘em. So it’s a more competitive game.

The cartels reportedly would have charged the two men from Mexico $8,000 each to cross. As for the alleged smuggler? He was arrested for the exact same thing last month.

Sharyl (on-camera): For more on our coverage of illegal immigration and other Full Measure stories, you can look up my podcast: Full Measure After Hours.

Watch video here.