Iron County in Utah is about the furthest thing from a border community.

But Sheriff Kenneth Carpenter says incidents like a traffic stop this month on the interstate, where a deputy nabbed a motorist for reckless driving and found 5 pounds of methamphetamine and $8,000 in cash, are the results of the chaos on the U.S.-Mexico boundary.

State officials have warned sheriffs that Honduran gangs have stepped up drug trafficking along the Wasatch Mountains, Iron County’s SWAT team callouts are “way up” and deputies are finding more guns when they serve search warrants, Sheriff Carpenter said.

“The floodgates have been opened, and we’re seeing it on a much more frequent basis.

We’re seeing a surge in the [drug] pipelines, we’re seeing a surge in fentanyl houses, we’re seeing a surge in criminal activity.”.

In other words, every community is a border community.

The most significant issues, however, are drugs and what follows from that, Sheriff Carpenter said.

Of the drugs that come primarily across the southern border, only marijuana is showing a significant drop-off.

They have been pulled from their regular duties and tasked with processing evacuees from the Afghanistan airlift and babysitting the record numbers of illegal immigrant children and near-record numbers of families that have come across the border since January.

The Biden administration has announced plans to ramp up pressure on the cartels that control the smuggling of people and drugs into the U.S.

Valenzuela Valenzuela is a player in the Sinaloa Cartel and moves heroin, methamphetamine and fentanyl out of Nogales, in Sonora, Mexico, right across the border from Nogales, Arizona.

Sheriff Carpenter said drugs are tied to guns in his community.

He said addicts steal firearms and trade them for drugs, putting more weapons into the hands of dealers

“We’re seeing a huge uptick in recidivism and the frequency we’re dealing with these people, over and over again,” the sheriff said