Police in Florida announced on Thursday that they arrested 25 illegal immigrants during a human trafficking sting earlier this month.

Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd revealed in a news conference that his department arrested 157 individuals as part of “Operation Autumn Sweep,” an undercover anti-human trafficking initiative conducted from October 2 to October 7. The arrests included illegal immigrants from Venezuela, Colombia, Honduras, Cuba, Guatemala, and Mexico.

“Sixteen percent of these total arrests were people who should not even have been in this country,” Judd said. “But they were here. And they were here because we have a federal government that enabled these criminals to come into the country and then treated them very well after the criminals came here illegally.”

In one instance, Judd said that one of the women arrested told authorities that she flew from Venezuela to Mexico before crossing into Texas, where she was “greeted by Border Patrol.”

“There was no sneaking. She flew in, she got here, she simply walked across the open border. There is no border security at the southern border. Zero. It doesn’t exist,” Judd said.

President Joe Biden announced less than two months after taking office in 2021 that he was assigning border security to Vice President Kamala Harris. But illegal crossings skyrocketed under her watch, setting new records seemingly every month.

Judd stated that the woman was informed she would qualify for benefits such as SNAP, Medicaid, free housing, and free travel.

“She was given free housing, all because the United States paid for that,” Judd said. “This was not a stealthful act, and they gave her free travel, free housing, free food, free medical care. All while people from the hurricane are still waiting for help.”

Judd stated that Travis Hutchinson, one of the men arrested during the operation, was trafficking two women from Colombia and Venezuela. They had been illegally brought into the United States by a human trafficker referred to as a coyote before being sent to the Sunshine State.

The sheriff also expressed strong criticism of the Biden-Harris administration, claiming that its border policies were facilitating human trafficking.

“Make no mistake about it, the government is complicit and is aiding and abetting human trafficking in the United States,” Judd said. “In addition to that, there is a wide-open border where fentanyl is coming across, and that is encouraged, and as a result of that, we have thousands upon thousands of people dying in the United States.

“And then the best that our federal politicians can say was, ‘well, it didn’t kill as many people this year as last year,'” he added.