Advertisement After announcing drug arrests, Sheriff Chuck Wright comments on building border wall Wright emphatically says, 'Build a wall' Share Shares Copy Link Copy

An Upstate sheriff, well-known for speaking his mind on a broad array of topics, took the opportunity during a news conference on a drug roundup to share his opinion on the border wall controversy.Spartanburg County Sheriff Chuck Wright held the news conference Thursday afternoon to announce several dozen drug-related arrests made during Operation Winter Blues. After Wright spoke about the arrests, a reporter asked the sheriff if he thought that getting these suspects off the streets would help with the drug epidemic here and across the country. “I’m gonna say something -- a lot of people are either on one side or the other -- and I don’t really care," Wright said. "Build a wall. A lot of that stuff is coming across the border. Build the dang wall. It’s takes $105 billion to support the illegals we have and $50 billion to build a fence. Humph. I went to Byrnes High School, and that’s still easy math! Dang, I mean it. “Just build a wall. I don’t care, nobody cares that immigrants come in. I don’t care about that. Come in the front door. Come in the front door and do what we do. If I’m gonna go to Mexico, they’re gonna make me do like Mexicans. That’s just the way it is. So, build a wall."When asked if he thought the wall would make a difference in drug trafficking, he said, “It would slow it down. I don’t think anything affects it, but it would slow it down, but slowing it down -- it would be a big slow down.”President Donald Trump is asking the federal government for $5.7 billion to build about 250 more miles of physical barrier between the U.S. and Mexico.The debate over a wall and the financing for it caused the failure of an appropriations bill that had to be passed by Congress and signed by the president in December. With no agreement, the federal government was forced to go into a partial shutdown.