PHOENIX — The border isn’t only a line in the desert. It’s every box, crate and package that lands at an American airport, and on Friday Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin went to see the Patriots who guard it. On his second day in Arizona, Mullin toured the U.S. Customs and Border Protection cargo facility at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, and DHS posted the video Saturday.
“Organized criminals often try to ship drugs and counterfeit goods into the United States through legitimate commerce channels,” DHS said, “but CBP has the expertise and manpower to stop contraband from entering our country.” In the video, every foreign shipment goes through the same process, with officers looking for illegal drugs, national-security threats and fraudulently labeled goods.
One catch tells the story. A shipment of baseball jerseys claimed to be made in Mexico and shipped from Mexico was flagged by CBP officers because the jerseys were actually made in China. That is exactly the kind of tariff dodge that cheats American workers, and President Trump’s team is shutting it down.
Mullin praised the officers’ know-how. “It was interesting to them talking about known shippers, understanding the patterns, how the traffickers and the cartels try to get around the duties, try to get around customs and the way they try to ship things into the country,” he said. “That’s why experience matters.”
The visit came the same trip Mullin tied Arizona’s 13 percent drop in violent crime to President Trump’s deportations of criminal illegal aliens. Watch Secretary Mullin with CBP at Sky Harbor in the DHS video above.
