Photos will not import photos from other folders

Hoping someone can help. My iMac is about to go out the window. I have air dropped photos from my iPhone XS to my iMac as my lightning port does not work. I am trying to import those photos into Photos. I have tried drag and drop of the photos onto the Photos app window, and using the "Import" function in Photos. Nothing happens. When using the import function it does show all the pictures and I have to click on the import new photos button but when I do that it goes back to my import folder and nothing imports. I have tried numbers of pictures from 1 to 100 and I have tried rebooting Photos and the computer.

I am on 10.15.5 on my 2012 iMac and my iPhone is on the latest OS and updates. All photos updates are installed. My photos library is on an external drive.

This issue seemed to "grow". When I first started importing I could do 100-200 photos at a time. Then it stopped working entirely, briefly would do up to 50, then maybe 5, now none.