Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson is planning to travel to Arizona this week for a helicopter tour of the southern border, according to his campaign.
Carson will participate, his campaign said, in briefings with Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu on “smuggling and illegal immigrants.”
He will then view the border from the air, taking a helicopter tour to “see smuggling routes and scout locations.”
Carson’s visit comes as a new Fox News poll shows the former brain surgeon surging to second place nationally with 12 percent, trailing only Donald Trump.
In an interview with The Daily Caller earlier this summer, Carson discussed his views on illegal immigration, saying he’d take steps to secure the border as president.
“What we really need to be talking about is how do we take care of our illegal immigration problem,” Carson said. “I’ve talked about that extensively. And the key thing is we have to secure all our borders—north, south, east and west.”
“And it doesn’t have to be a fence or wall,” Carson added. “That’s stupid. We have all kinds of electronic surveillance devices, drones, not to mention people. So we can do it. And then turn off the spigot that dispenses all the things that they are coming here to get. Then there won’t be any reason for them to do it.”
“I mean that’s pretty simple, and straightforward,” he said. “And I think everybody knows that. That’s there’s the ability to do it, there’s not the will to do it. It’s too juicy a political football.”