Photo: CBS 12
Palm Beach County's sheriff held a last minute news conference on Wednesday with one simple but crucial message.
"Don't think for a minute that what happens at the Mexican border doesn't affect us here. Here you have three illegals that should have never been in this country that have committed a very serious crime...kidnapping and sexual battery of a lady."
Ric Bradshaw is referring to three men who are Guatemalan nationals that were arrested for abducting a woman from a residential area near Lake Worth Beach early Monday morning and sexually assaulting her in two different locations.
She was rescued after flagging down a passerby.
The sheriff says that "in all likelihood" the suspects came through the Mexico border. He says he knows they didn't arrive in Palm Beach by boat.
"Our border is the ocean. There's no fence there, we are the fence. That's why we spend as much time as we do and dedicate resources to stopping people before they get here."
He says the federal government is not doing enough to secure the southern border and calls that status of illegal immigration in this country the worst he's seen in his 52 years in law enforcement.
Bradshaw draws a parallel between this case and the one involving Georgia nursing student Laken Riley, who was killed by an illegal immigrant.
"They shouldn't be here. This is the same thing we saw where the student was killed by the person that was here illegally."
29-year old Andres Morales, 30-year old Darinel Jiminez and 31-year old Marcos Ramirez were arrested Monday night. As the Sheriff's Office put it in an emailed press release, they are "only held on $200,000 bond."