Karl Rove: “An anti-Hispanic attitude is suicidal.”

Read fascinating quotes from GOP leaders waxing eloquent on immigration, courtesy of the website of  the pro-immigration reform America’s Voice.

Many of these quotes seem at odds with the shrill restrictionist tone of current Republican presidential primary candidates.

Mitt Romney photo licensed by Creative Commons.

In the last weeks, Mitt Romney voiced satisfaction over the endorsement of the lawyer who wrote SB1070 and said he’d veto the DREAM Act. (The federal measure, introduced for years but  never passed, would give temporary legal residency to kids who were brought to the United States illegally as minors, came up through our schools, have no criminal records, and want to serve in the armed forces or attend college. If they succeed, they get green cards.)  And now NumbersUSA, a John Tanton spinoff, is sponsoring anti-immigrant ads in South Carolina.

In the meantime, Barack Obama is reaching out to Latinos,  promoting  Cecilia Munoz to domestic policy czarina and making administrative changes in immigration policy.

Who do you think has a better chance in Arizona? Barack Obama or Mitt Romney?

In some Latin American countries,  “notarios” are well-respected and have a reputation for honesty. In Arizona and other parts of the United States, like Minnesota, self-described “notarios” sometimes prey on the most vulnerable immigrants,  as Minnesota reporter Gregory Pratt explains in this  Ciity  Pages story.

Today the Associated Press reports that apprehensions of unauthorized immigrants at the border declined for the fifth straight year, and are at the same rate we saw during the Nixon administration.

In the meantime, the Obama Administration continues to deport at a record clip.

And Republicans are moderating their hardline stance on immigration reform.  Republicans are historically  the party that enacts immigration reform. The last big reform was led by Ronald Reagan.

Newt is talking about a kinder, gentler policy. And so are pundits like  Bill O’Reilly.

The Republicans have a chance of winning this election if they can win over Latinos, who are disenchanted with what they see as the the Obama administration’s broken promises to enact reform.

This all leads me back to my book, which chronicled the vivid stories — and the stunning effects of a broken immigration policy — of undocumented immigrants in the Phoenix area during the Arizona immigration law controversy. In the book, Illegal, Life and Death in Arizona’s Immigration War Zone, I posited that the real problem wasn’t the right-wing frenzy over illegal immigration, because despite the heated rhetoric illegal immigration was waning significantly.

The real immigration problem centers on the unauthorized immigrants who live here  — and the  way in which our nation chooses to treat human beings.

Photo by Farmer Dodds from Flickr

Almost three years ago, on a cold night in November, two Border Patrol agents allegedly came across four “Mexican National” pot smugglers in the Arizona desert. The agents, Dario Castillo and Ramon Zuniga, forced the smugglers to take off their shoes, socks and jackets (just like drop house kidnappers) and burned them. They forced the smugglers to eat pot. Then they sent them hightailing into the desert. Now the two agents have been indicted for human rights violations by a federal grand jury in Tucson. Again, this is all alleged.  It’s too early for the BP agents to respond. But you  can read the DOJ press release below.
Border Patrol 2011-170(Castillo et al)

PHOTO OF RUSSELL PEARCE VIA FLICKR BY GAGE SKIDMORE LICENSED BY CREATIVE COMMONS

In an exclusive salon.com  story,  Jeff Biggers carefully documents how the sponsor of Arizona’s famed SB 1070, Arizona Senate President Russell Pearce, “borrows” entire passages from extremist nut jobs for his Facebook page and in his writings. In at least one case, the “borrowed” material had already been thoroughly debunked as hate-filled nonsense before Pearce copied it.

Biggers reinforces in a new and fresh way what Arizona journalists have been pointing out for years.

Pearce lacks integrity.

For years, Arizona journos have been pointing out that Pearce, a former director of the Arizona Department of Motor Vehicles, had to leave that post after allegations of tampering with a driver license record of a constituent.  He was not prosecuted.

Although Pearce has long spouted off about family values, both is former and current wives told police Pearce bullied them. One wife said Pearce tried to choke her, but later retracted the statement.

Pearce’s son Joshua is a troubled soul with a substance abuse problem and an arrest record. CPS took his kids, Pearce’s grandchildren.

In December, Phoenix New Times published my investigative piece documenting Pearce’s ties with the extremist group FAIR, the powerhouse behind SB 1070 that was founded by John Tanton and is closely allied to its cousins NumbersUSA and Center for Immigration Studies, or CIS.

Now Pearce is the only legislator in Arizona history to face a recall election. It’s scheduled for early November.

Russell Pearce’s long, sorry saga has long evoked outrage in Arizona.

But should it also evoke pity?

Braceros.

This is all you need to know.

Thank you, Eugene and Los Cenzontles.

Albert Gaxiola, A Tucson Courtroom, The Arivaca Home Invasion Murders

A hot July morning, I’m sitting with journalist Dave Ricker in the media room of the Pima County Superior Court in Tucson.

A windowless room, a table, a few chairs.

We’re waiting for the jury to decide if Albert Gaxiola should be sentenced to death for killing little  Brisenia Flores and her dad Raul in a bloody home invasion in the Arizona borderlands.

We’ve been in this room  before, waiting to see if the other killers would be sentenced to death for the same crimes. They were. First, Shawna Forde, a disturbed beautician from Washington state who started her own border vigilante group, was sent to death row. And then Jason Bush, an alleged serial killer and pretend war hero,  was sentenced to die.

After a long trial, prosecutors  convinced the jury that Albert Gaxiola sicked Shawna Forde and Jason  Bush on Raul Flores because Raul was competition in the drug business.  So Albert is a killer.

Now Dave and I are  waiting to see if that same jury will sentence Albert to die, or to life in prison for the killings.

Me and Dave, we’re just talking and surfing the Internet.

Then we see  Albert’s lawyers rushing into the court room, and we pack up our  Macbook Pros and race after the lawyers.

We hightail it into the courtroom and set up our computers.  There’s a problem, the bailiff says. There’s a backup in the jail. The overworked deputies can’t get Albert up to the courtroom.

Gina Gonzalez and her family rush into the courtroom too. Gina is the mom of Brisenia Flores and the widow of Raul Flores, who Albert wanted dead. Her daughter and her husband were killed in front of her. She survived by playing dead on the floor after she was shot, and then engaging in a gun battle with the killers when they came back in to her bloody trailer to finish her off.

***

Here’s what you need to know about Albert Gaxoiola: He had been a friend of Gina and Raul.  Little Brisenia adored him. But he was a drug dealer and a drug user. His mom, now an obese woman with a pink walker, couldn’t care for him when he was little.  Too many men.  So Albert’s uncle and aunt raised him in California, and once he’d grown up, he’d sold mortgages there. Then he went back to see his mom, and started dealing drugs with her. And he got caught and served a light sentence. But instead of going back to his clean life in California, he settled in Arivaca, where I met him in 2008.

I was on assignment for a magazine. Writing about the border.

Albert and this guy were talking outside a feed store in Arivaca, just a few miles north of the Mexican border. Albert’s companion was an old hippie, I think his name was something like Stinky Steve.  They saw me, a reporter with a notebook, and Stinky Steve vamoosed.

Albert was very very guarded talking to me. He said he was of Basque heritage, that his family had been in the area for centuries, that his grandma sold tacos on the streets of Arivaca, that she died and he’d come home to attend her funeral, and that he was staying in Arivaca to get away from the California rat race.  One more thing: He  felt sorry for Mexican  immigrants hoofing through town. They just wanted a bit of the American dream, he said.

I didn’t know he was a drug guy, I just knew he was, as I told you before,  guarded.

And a year later, after he was charged with the Arivaca murders, I wondered why a guy so sympathetic to the plight of unauthorized Mexican immigrants would hook up with a Mexican-hating Minutewoman.

***

Today in the courtroom I think he looks a lot like I remember him. Not real tall. Broad-shouldered.  Dark-skinned. Prominent nose. Short black hair in a businessman’s cut.

But his legs are manacled and his hands are cuffed behind him. Once the deputy unlocks the cuffs, Albert puts on  his dark tie.  And his belt.

His packaging is entirely different from the other killers. Jason Bush looked like a tall lunatic on a serious dose of psychiatric medication.  Shawna Forde: A  beautician with delusions of grandeur.

But Albert, he still looks like a man who sold mortgages in California.

Judge John Leonardo enters the courtroom, says  the jury can’t reach a unanimous decision.

Albert looks happy. Maybe he will escape lethal injection. He jokes with his legal team.

Then everyone leaves for lunch, and Albert is cuffed and taken back into a holding cell.

***

Dave and I barely get our granola bars scarfed down before the jury reaches a verdict.

Same routine. We race into the courtroom.

Albert is brought in.

“Another circus, different clowns,” a deputy tells a  prosecutor.

A reporter talks about having witnessed a lethal injection execution.  The reporter says it is an easy death.

Not like the deaths of Brisenia Flores, who begged for her life before she was shot twice in the head. Not like the death of Raul Flores, who was shot multiple times and drowned in his own blood. Not like the death of part of Gina Gonzalez, who saw all this and must live with it for the rest of her life.

Albert puts on his belt. He puts on his tie. He rocks in his chair. Rock. Rock. Rock.

The jury sentences Albert to life for arranging the hit on Raul Flores, but it can’t reach a decision on whether Albert is guilty of killing Brisenia.

Gina’s relatives seem upset. Why life? Why no decision on killing Brisenia?

The prosecutor tries to explain: This is an okay verdict. It really is. And here’s why: He’s  gonna spend the rest of his life in prison, he’s gonna be in the yard. Killers of children have a hard time in the yard.  This won’t be an easy life for Albert.  He’s scared. So scared, he’s been telling people in prison he didn’t do anything bad. He’s been putting out feelers to protect himself. Everyone knows he’s coming.

It’s not going to be easy.

Phoenix New Times columnist Stephen Lemons  recently engaged  in a delicious e-mail mano-a-mano with Brooke Buchanan, the spokesperson of Sen. John McCain, over the senator’s insistence that migrants caused some of Arizona’s recent  wildfires.

To back up her boss’s statements, Buchanan sent Lemons old  testimony and some newspaper clips indicating that unauthorized immigrants start wildfires.

But Lemons, aka  The Feathered Bastard, noted in  his column that Buchanan offered no documents indicating  immigrants actually started the wildfires now raging in southern Arizona, as her boss had contended.

I don’t know why McCain said what he said, but he undoubtedly scared a lot of people into fearing firebug Mexicans will incinerate the nation.

We all know what happens when Americans get scared — they pass knee-jerk  laws.

In Arizona, SB 1070 was passed after the 2010 killing of a borderlands rancher was blamed on a Mexican migrant. The rancher’s killing and the hysteria surrounding it scared Arizonans.  They thought SB 1070 would protect the border.

It had nothing to do with the border.

It had everything to do with driving out Mexicans.

Which drove down our economy.

And  get this — a year later, no one’s been charged with the rancher’s murder that prompted the passage of SB 1070.

The Feathered Bastard was right to point out that a white nationalist website V-DARE and border vigilante Glenn Spencer have hailed McCain’s ongoing insistence that wildfires on the border were caused by migrants.   I’d like to add one more website  to Lemons’ list — the apparently beleaguered nativist group ALIPAC, which linked  to a CNN story about the  McCain statement when it broke a few days ago.

Ironically, when ALIPAC  endorsed  J.D. Hayworth in the senate primary, McCain’s campaign called ALIPAC an “extreme group.”  McCain and ALIPAC have not gotten along in the past.

Maybe they will now.

(Quick full disclosure: I was on a New  Times staffer for 14 years. In 2010, I wrote an investigative package for my alma mater — on white-nationalist ties to groups fueling and funding the immigration debate. )

ARIZONA’S TOUGHEST SHERIFF IGNORED SEX ABUSE VICTIMS, REPORT SAYS.

The  little boys and girls told authorities about the adults who molested and raped them, only to be ignored by the office of the Toughest Sheriff in America.

This is surely what happened in at least some of the 400 sex-crime cases that Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s office  mishandled, according to a well-publicized investigation of the Sheriff’s Office that was reported in the Arizona Republic.

And the sheriff knew about them. In a 2008 letter printed in The Arizona Republic, the police chief of El Mirage, a Phoenix suburb that contracted with Sheriff Joe for police services, wrote that  many of the 43 sex-abuse cases turned over to the sheriff’s office for investigation involved children and teens. The names of alleged abusers were handed over to the sheriff’s office.

But the sheriff’s office failed to follow through. The police chief  wrote in his letter to Sheriff Joe that the cases had grown cold.

Families moved out of town.

Victims and their abusers vanished.

Why did the office of the Toughest Sheriff in America choose to ignore the sex crime cases?

It focused its resources and manpower instead  on:

1. Battling Sheriff Joe’s political foes via well-publicized “public corruption” investigations that cost taxpayers millions and went nowhere and resulted in additional millions of dollars of claims against the county.
2. Rounding up “illegals” in immigration sweeps of Latino neighborhoods, and ensnaring U.S. citizens in the process, spurring  millions of dollars of additional court claims and lawsuits. Again, taxpayers footed the legal bills.

The sheriff himself now faces indictment as the feds close in on him.

He’s the target of two separate Justice Department investigations. The first investigation centers on alleged human rights abuses in the sheriff’s jails and during those immigration sweeps. The second probe centers on Arpaio’s alleged abuses of power.

The buzz in Arizona now centers on why it’s taking the feds so long to act.

I mean, we’ve read exposes about  Sheriff Joe’s mismanagement of his office and of conditions in his jails for years.

And years.

Tony Ortega, my former colleague at Phoenix New Times and the current editor of the Village Voice, began writing about irregularities in the sheriff’s office and jails back in the 1990s.

The newspaper continued exposing horrors in the jails–including unexplained deaths–for years.

And years.

As a result, Sheriff Joe and his supporter, former Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas (now facing disbarment for alleged abuses of power),  turned their sights on  Phoenix New Times  and even arrested its owners  in 2007 for publicizing a grand jury subpoena they generated. The subpoena required New Times to turn over the IP addresses and browsing habits of their readers.

The newspaper refused to comply with the subpoena.

Charges were dismissed, which frequently happens when the Sheriff’s Office goes after its perceived foes.

A year later, in 2008, the tiny East Valley Tribune won a Pulitzer Prize for a series exposing how Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s office focused on costly immigration sweeps and neglected real crime solving, including the solving of sex crimes in El Mirage, that  impoverished Phoenix suburb that contracted with Sheriff Joe for police services.

The Pulitzer series was published at he height of Sheriff Joe’s terrifying immigration raids. I know. I immersed myself in one such raid and wrote about it in my book. It appeared  expensive, to say the least.  Cops in helicopters. Cops in riot gear. Cops in squad cars. Cops in unmarked cars. Cops on horses. Cops on motorcycles. Cops on foot. Cops in cars. Cops in a mobile command  unit. All of this to round up a handful of undocumented Mexicans.

Fast forward to 2011. Two of the sheriff’s trusted aides have been fired, and one is on administrative leave for conducting bogus investigations of Sheriff Joe’s enemies, and for misspending funds, and for running a weird shadow campaign organization that, among other things, wrongly smeared Sheriff Joe’s opponent in the 2008 election. You can read about this in Phoenix New Times. And The Arizona Republic.

If any of these ex-aides are charged with crimes, Sheriff Joe’s foes say,  it is likely they’ll snitch on Sheriff Joe to save their own skins.

All of this raises the unanswered question — how did Sheriff Joe get re-elected and re-elected even in the wake of so much media scrutiny?

I’ve thought about this a lot, and it is my considered opinion that folks like  Arpaio, State Senator Russell Pearce,  and a slew of  minor extremist candidates  get elected for one or all of these reasons:

1. Arizonans consume less news than average Americans, which makes them less engaged, according to the Morrison Institute of Public Policy.
2. Arizonans who do not consume news elect officials who promise to entertain them.
3. Arizonans who do not consume news tend to blow off primary elections, where extremist demagogues get their footing.

Of course these uninformed voters hurt themselves — and the state.

Arizona’s new image as a racist backwater, with its firebrand sheriff and harsh immigration laws, has damaged the very economy Arizona voters depend on for their laid-back lives.

If voters cut back on reality tv and golf and shopping and their own problems just for a few minutes — the span of time it takes to scan the newspaper or online news venues — would  they still elect Sheriff Joe?

Sheriff Joe professes his innocence. He says he knew nothing of the sleaze in his office.  If that’s true, he’s a terrible manager. But if he knew about what was going on,  then he will likely be indicted.

I spent many hours with Sheriff Joe and he takes up a chapter in my book. There’s pathos in his story.

Photo by Kathy McCraine

Honestly, he will go down blaming an imagined leftist conspiracy for bringing him down.

Sheriff Joe will fight.

He’ll get his day in court.

But many of the abused children will never get justice.

MYTHBUSTING 101- CRIMINAL ALIENS IN ARIZONA PRISONS

Flashback to 2010. During the height of the battle over SB 1070, Arizona’s notorious immigration law that makes it a state crime for unauthorized migrants to set foot in Arizona (it has been paralyzed in the courts, and is largely emasculated at this point) I spoke with John Kavanagh, one of the supporters of SB 1070. Kavanagh is a former Port Authority and New Jersey cop. He retired as a detective sergeant. And he told me that “illegal” prison inmates are costing Arizona plenty.

I remember asking him how he knew this, and he referred me to the Arizona Department of Corrections.

The department now reports about 13 percent of its prison population is made up of “criminal aliens.”

But that does not mean that  13 percent of Arizona’s prison inmates are undocumented immigrants?

No.

And there’s no way of telling how many in our prisons are undocumented immigrants.

***

The reasons lie in arcane definitions.

The definition for  “criminal aliens” is “noncitizens convicted of crimes while in this country legally or illegally,” according to the GAO.

DHS defines an “alien” as anyone in the U.S. who is not a citizen or national of the United States, according to its website. Aliens can be perfectly legal. They can be asylees. They can have work papers. They can have visas. On the  other hand, “aliens”  can be in the country illegally. Aliens who are here illegally are called “unauthorized aliens” or “illegal aliens.”

Legal and “illegal” aliens can both be  “criminal aliens.”

Bottom line, we just don’t know how many undocumented immigrants sit in  Arizona prisons.

It is wrongheaded  to label the entire “criminal alien” population in Arizona prisons as undocumented  immigrants (Kavanagh calls them “illegals”) because the population isn’t counted in a way that will give us that data.

Period.

End.