Florida Sheriff Criticizes Biden Administration Over Illegal Immigration After Over 9,000 Berries Are Stolen

Photo by Brevard County Sheriff’s Office, Florida (Official), Facebook | Joe Biden, Facebook

What do several tons of saw palmetto berries have to do with illegal immigration? In a live statement he made on August 26, 2024, Florida’s Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey has the answer. 

His statement, which is over six minutes in length, initially started as an update on an investigation resulting in the arrest of suspects involved in stealing saw palmetto berries. However, he began by saying that this investigation “provides a number of perfect examples as to why we need to secure our nation’s borders and what happens when we do not”. 

In this case, eight suspects stole about $7,300, or over 9,000 pounds, worth of saw palmetto berries from a Brevard County citizen’s property. In addition, they were trespassing, had forged documents claiming that they were permitted to be on the property, and palmetto berries are usually illegal to harvest in Florida without special permission anyway.

This crime took place on August 23, when a Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) officer was driving down I-95 near the southern region of Brevard County and noticed a U-Haul box truck in the woods on the other side of a fence. Some of the suspects were not arrested at the scene, but eight people were ultimately arrested, and seven were held on a bond of $2,500 each for harvesting the palmetto berries without a valid permit. 

The suspect being held with no bond, Elias Herrera, was also “charged with an on-site violation of probation for possession of cocaine out of Collier County”. Several of the suspects have been arrested multiple times previously, including on felony charges, which is true for the woman overseeing the operation, Elise Yeppes. 

Six of the other suspects, Luisa Francisco-Tomas, Jacob Reyes Flores, Roberto Reyes Flores, Elias Reyes Flores, Adelfo Marroquin-Rojas, and Esbin Jimenez, are also illegal immigrants. Marroquin-Rojas and Jimenez have been deported before and reentered the United States illegally. They are still actively applying for citizenship and cannot currently be deported due to their impending court dates regarding their immigration status.

Another reason why these two cannot be deported is that they did not commit a violent felony. Sheriff Ivey states that “unless they commit a violent felony, they are not going to be deported no matter how many non-violent crimes they have committed”. This means that, in the United States, illegal immigrants have to “kill or injure someone during the commission of a violent felony” in order to be deported.

Sheriff Ivey finds that, as a country, this concept is giving illegal immigrants “every opportunity we can to be overachievers in the crime game so they can commit a violent crime before we deport them for being a criminal in the first place”. Having been to the border himself on various occasions, he attests to witnessing the “massive influx of illegals flooding our country and the impact it is having”.

He added that “illegal immigration does not stop at the border”. Instead, “it filters into every community in our country”, even impacting Floridians close to home in Brevard County. With that said, he asked, “When are we as a nation going to say we have had enough of this crap?”.

Sheriff Ivey went on to verbally go after the Biden Administration for its handling of illegal immigration, calling the influx of illegal immigrants “a complete and total failure on Washington, D.C., for not allowing the laws of our great nation to be enforced”. 

He also stated that “every day that our borders are open for illegals to cross is another day we are opening us up to more illegal activity such as the flood of fentanyl that is crossing the border, human trafficking, and yes, even theft of our citizens’ property that they worked hard to have”.

In a final appeal, Sheriff Ivey made a frustrated plea to the Biden Administration: “allow our customs and border patrol agents to secure the damn border like our laws allow…or get the hell out of the way…and I will do it with the help of sheriffs from across the country who actually believe in enforcing the law and who are sick and tired of this crap”.

Article by Ema Tibbetts