Mississippi AG nearly collapses, is aided by Utah AG Brown during tour of the southern border

YUMA, Ariz. — Temperatures at the southern border in Yuma, Arizona, teetered at the 100-degree line on Wednesday, as members of the Republican Attorneys General Association leadership took a tour of the U.S.-Mexico border, described by the tour participants as hot, dusty and dry.

Members of the association, including Utah Attorney General Derek Brown, were quick to respond when their colleague, Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch, appeared to become lightheaded from the conditions, nearly falling before Brown and others caught her in time.

"I am so relieved Attorney General Lynn Fitch is doing OK and we were able to help her," Brown told the Deseret News. "I'm proud to have her as a colleague."

Fitch's communications director, MaryAsa Lee, also told the Desert News that Fitch is doing well, as she managed to offer her remarks after the incident, though noting, "The temperatures are well into the triple digits today in Arizona!"

Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman, who was speaking at the time of the incident, emphasized that it's a "difficult environment that we ask men and women to serve in every day."

The changed border due to a changed administration

During President Joe Biden's four years in office, Sheriff David Rhodes, who serves Yavapai County in Arizona, said America's southern border created "the most difficult, unsafe, unsanitary, unreasonable time in the history of this country when it comes to public safety and national security."

He added that in those fours years, law enforcement spent countless hours in Washington, D.C., pushing for more aid, stricter legislation and policy enforcement, "because we knew the one thing which has been true until the end of time," he said, "which is that when people believe that the laws are going to be enforced, they don't break them, and that is the only way that you're going to have a safe and secure nation is to enforce the nation's laws."

Rhodes' comments were made Wednesday morning in Yuma at the southern border tour and discussion with federal officials and the Republican Attorneys General Association.

Much of the conversation centered around collaborative efforts between state and federal law enforcement to crack down on criminals who came through the U.S. border under the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's 287(g) program. As of this week, "ICE has signed 603 Memorandums of Agreement for 287(g) programs covering 40 states."

One of those states is Utah, where most fentanyl distributed within the state is coming from the southern border.

Brown said that though Utah isn't a direct border state with Mexico, it still faces the same issues. "We have highways traversing our state, and when drugs cross the border here, they're in Utah, within a matter of hours," he said, adding that Utah was just recently included in the Drug Enforcement Administration's largest fentanyl bust in American history.

The operation targeted the Sinaloa Cartel. Federal law enforcement arrested 16 people and "seized record-breaking quantities of fentanyl, cash, firearms, and vehicles across multiple states, dismantling one of the largest and most dangerous drug trafficking organizations in U.S. history."

During Wednesday's discussion, officials said that there is a significant difference between when laws are enforced and when they are not, as shown by the variation in the number of border crossings since last year.

The White House posted that in October 2024, border crossings were nearly 60,000 in just one month, down to 7,000 in March of this year.

"It turns out we didn't need a new law. We just needed a new president," Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen said.

"Under Biden's unprecedented open borders, America suffered from drugs, from human trafficking, from unprecedented crime," he said. "Now that we have the Trump administration, things have shifted. Instead of playing defense, now we can play offense and collaborate with President Trump as we help him to protect the border."

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