Several of Southwest Michigan’s elected officials were represented on the main stage at Former President Donald Trump’s campaign rally in Grand Rapids yesterday.
The former president asked Van Buren County Sheriff Daniel Abbott to speak about the problems illegal immigration pose for his county. Abbott said he ran the numbers for the Van Buren County Jail this week.
“Forty percent of our inmates in our jail in Van Buren County have out-of-county residency. Out of the 40 percent that do not live in our county that we’re feeding every day, 10 percent of those have addresses from Mexico or Guatemala. Put that in perspective. We are a rural community. Ten percent of the folks in our jail are from Mexico or Guatemala.”
Sheriff Abbott said those arrested are not because they’re immigrants.
“They’re not in our jail by coincidence. We didn’t just see him walking down the road and saying, ‘You know what? I don’t think you belong here.’ They’re in our jail because they committed crimes. If you look at the heinous crimes that they committed, the one that really jumped out at us is all the violent sex crimes, and it’s not just against adults. It’s against our children as well in our community. And that’s appalling.”
Also represented at the Trump rally, State Senator Aric Nesbitt and Berrien County Sheriff Chuck Heit.
