EXCLUSIVE: Tim Scott vows to REMOVE Biden’s asylum app and finish Trump’s wall during border visit

Senator Tim Scott took his presidential campaign to the southern border on Friday, where as president he pledged to complete Donald Trump’s wall and remove on day one the app introduced by the Biden administration for migrants to seek asylum.

He is the last 2024 hopeful to use the border with Mexico as a backdrop for campaign promises to tackle illegal immigration.

He heard from local officials and hospital workers in Yuma, Arizona, about the pressures their community is facing, as well as a plea for an end to the CBP One app for migrants to make asylum appointments.

“If I am president of the United States, I will remove the app that President Biden introduced on smartphones,” he said during a roundtable discussion at Yuma Regional Medical Center.

“I think there are so many perverse incentives to break our laws to come to our country.”

Earlier, DailyMail.com got an exclusive image when Scott visited the border wall just outside the city.

He heard from Sheriff Leon Wilmott and Country Supervisor Jonathan Lines how local border services were still thin despite a decline in arrivals since May, when pandemic Title 42 restrictions were lifted.

And he was told that 140 different nationalities had been recorded passing through the area.

He later outlined his plans to secure the border and speed up the processing of arrivals.

“It is also essential to have 1,000 extra immigration judges so that we can speed up the transfer to their home countries,” he said at the roundtable.

“So there are things we can do, literally from day one, that will help reduce the flow of illegal immigrants.”

A day earlier, DailyMail.com revealed that migrants were being held in a sweltering outdoor cage at the Ajo Border Patrol station as officers struggled to cope with the influx.

Scott said it was a symptom of President Joe Biden’s broken system.

“If you have a virtual sign, not a literal one, that says your border is wide open, even if it’s unsafe and unsafe, you can’t expect 6 million people to pass through the country without causing a real crisis,” he said. he.

“One of the things you can do very quickly to solve that problem is to finish the wall if the cost of that wall would be around $10 billion. If we did, we would significantly reduce traffic.”

At the round table, he also heard how the immigration crisis affects local businesses, the hospital and the emergency services.

A mother described the loss of her son to fentanyl poisoning, in an area where the death toll is 16 times higher than the national average.

Border security will be a major battleground in next year’s presidential election. And the border itself is an important springboard for Republican hopefuls.

But it means candidates’ record on immigration will come under scrutiny. The Center for Effective Lawmaking, which monitors legislators’ results, has scored Scott a zero on this every year since his election.

For now, the number of people crossing the border around Yuma has fallen since peaking earlier this year before the end of strict Title 42 restrictions.

Locals say extreme heat has brought some calm to Yuma.

Lines said daily temperatures of over 100F kept people away. But that brought other problems.

“The border is a bit quieter at the moment, if only because of the heat. We’ve seen fewer people in this area,” he said.

“The cartel actually pushed people further into the desert, which puts a strain on our local resources because we have to do search and rescue and get people out of the desert

“Some of these people have no idea where they’re being dropped off.”

He said the result would likely be a record number of deaths as people tried to cross the border. The number is already close to 20 this year, he added.

Border Patrol in Ajo is forced to use an outdoor cage to house migrants as their indoor facilities are full.

The area is seeing the biggest spike in arrivals as cartels target a portion of the border from which agents and resources have been moved to better-known hotspots.

Overall, new data from Customs and Border Protection shows that illegal border crossings rose more than 30 percent in July, reversing a decline since President Joe Biden overhauled immigration rules.

CBP recorded more than 130,000 arrests along the border compared to 99,545 in June, according to a source close to Border Patrol.

The peak is largest in southern Arizona in the Ajo region. The Tucson sector recorded 40,000 arrests last month, making it the highest monthly total in 15 years. (The numbers were first reported by the Washington Post.)

A source close to Border Patrol told DailyMail.com that several large groups had arrived on Tuesday evening. At least 600 people were detained in the Ajo area and there were 1,900 encounters in the entire sector of Tucson alone.

That compares to an average of 800 a day in November last year, when the weather was milder and numbers were high across the border.

On Wednesday the result could be seen in the outside cage at Ajo station.

From a cacti-studded ridge overlooking the grounds, several dozen arrivals could be seen trying to shelter in the shade of a canopy, waiting for processing and bus transportation to facilities in Tucson or Yuma.

They moved deeper into the cage as the sun’s position changed over the course of the day.