Kari Lake , a firebrand Republican set on becoming the next Arizona senator, blamed the unchecked illegal immigration crisis that has hounded the southern border for nearly three years on President Joe Biden , a debacle she said was no accident.

"We're seeing what can happen when you have a president, a person named Joe Biden who came in and actually peeled back an effective border policy that was working," Lake said in an exclusive interview with the Washington Examiner this week. "He did that on day one. And I think he did it intentionally to destabilize our country."

Lake, who unsuccessfully ran for governor in 2022 following her career as a TV anchor, pointed to millions of people who have illegally immigrated to the United States by way of Mexico since Biden took office, as well as the burgeoning fentanyl epidemic, as being the desired outcomes of Biden's policy choices since taking office.

"I really believe what we're seeing now besides this ... weapon of mass destruction called fentanyl going across, killing the equivalent — it'd be the equivalent of a jumbo jet crashing every day. That's how many people are dying from fentanyl poisoning," Lake said. "We're also seeing, you know, terrorists come in and criminals come into our country. We have allowed our country to be invaded. And basically, we have a foreign army of people that are here in our country right now. Americans are not safe because of it."

In fiscal 2023, which ended in September, the U.S. Border Patrol arrested more than 170 people on the FBI's terror watch list after they attempted to enter from Canada or Mexico illegally. The figure was beyond the single-digit numbers seen in recent years, and many of the suspected or known terrorists have been identified by Border Patrol sources to the Washington Examiner as Colombians who were on watch lists due to civil war-era affiliations.

Lake announced her bid for the GOP nomination in mid-October and has the most name recognition in the Republican pool of candidates, which includes Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb. On the Democratic side, Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) is vying for the seat currently held by independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ), who has not yet announced whether she's seeking reelection.

Polling from Noble Predictive Insights released in November on a three-way hypothetical matchup had Gallego at 39% support among Arizona registered voters, a 6 percentage point advantage over Lake at 33% support, and an even bigger lead over Sinema (29%).

Lake jumped into the race with the support of former President Donald Trump .

Although Lake endorsed Trump's border approach, she has her own plan of 10 steps to get the border functioning optimally. Under Biden, more than 6 million people have crossed illegally and been arrested, far more than in former President Barack Obama's two terms in office.

"We have to start by building the wall," said Lake. "We have to stop the bleeding, as they say. If you have a severed artery, you don't spend your time, money, and energy, you know, mopping up the blood that's spilling. You spend your immediate energy protecting and stopping the bleeding from that artery. And the Democrats always like to go the other way. They love having these problems. And then they just throw a ton of money at the symptoms and [try] to help with the symptoms rather than [address] the problem."

Lake said a physical barrier, which Trump completed 450 miles of after acquiring $15 billion for roughly 800 miles, was at the top of her list and must be completed "immediately."

Second, immigrants who illegally cross the border between land ports of entry would automatically be deported.

However, international asylum laws allow immigrants to seek refuge if they believe they will be persecuted if returned to their home country, including if an immigrant enters unlawfully.

The remainder of Lake's 10-prong plan called for more technology surveillance; enforcing various immigration laws to their full extent; hiring hundreds, if not thousands, of immigration judges to hear the 2 million pending cases; building immigration detention facilities on the border to house asylum-seekers rather than release people into the country; utilizing a government program that screens job-seekers; withholding foreign aid to countries that do not help stop illegal immigration to the U.S.; and providing assistance to other countries aimed at taking down cross-border criminal organizations.

But getting results, particularly on a barrier, could be challenging at best. Trump had completed just 1 mile of wall 2 1/2 years into his tenure, two years in which he had a Republican-controlled House and Senate.

Lake maintained that she would be different, even as a senator, and said finishing wall projects could be done in a matter of months, if not weeks. More than 1,000 miles of the 2,000-mile southern border has no barrier. Most of Trump's projects were not in new, unfenced areas but replaced shorter fences.

"President Trump talks about how it could be completed in weeks, like three or four weeks," said Lake. "Let's say at the worst case scenario [it] took three months to complete the wall."

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