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)

Braceros.

This is all you need to know.

Thank you, Eugene and Los Cenzontles.

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. )

I’m sitting just a few feet away from a very tall child killer.

Jason Bush photo by Dean Knuth -- Arizona Daily Star

He’s wearing a light blue green shirt and gray slacks without a belt. His skin is sallow, and he’s got a five o’clock shadow.  He’s lost a lot of weight since he was arrested about two years ago. His black second-hand shoes are too big and flop off his heels when he walks. He’s got really big brown eyes  and a straight nose. Thin lips. He’s pulled his shoulder-length dark hair into a pony tail. He has a receding hairline.

Killers look just like anyone else. They don’t stand out in a crowd.

He appears completely calm as a clerk in a Tucson courtroom reads the jury’s guilty verdict.

He has no expression on his face. But I look carefully, and I think he’s breathing faster than normal as the verdicts are read.  Guilty of two counts of murder. One count of attempted murder. Various home invasion crimes.  Burglary. Robbery.

He puts on his glasses. He takes off his glasses. He closes his eyes.

***

Back in 2009,  Jason Bush was a drifter and ex-con who pretended to be a decorated Army sniper involved in covert operations.

He had fake certificates that he showed to Shawna Forde, a beautician from Everett Washington who wanted to rob a family of money and drugs. She believed his sniper story. Shawna enlisted Jason for her little Minuteman group.

One day in May 2009, Jason painted his face black, just like in the movies.  He and  Shawna barged into a trailer in Arivaca, Arizona, just a few miles north of the border. They wore camouflage and uniforms and pretended to be officers in search of fugitives. A few minutes later, Jason killed a little girl and her father. He shot the mother, but she played dead.

After Jason and Shawna left the trailer, (disappointed that they hadn’t found drugs or money to fund Shawna’s border vigilante activities) the mother called 911.

The child was still dying,  convulsing and vomiting blood. The mother begged the 911 operator for help.

Then Shawna came back into the trailer.

Shawna  saw the mom calling 911, and yelled to Jason to come back in the trailer. There was a witness still alive, Shawna shouted, and someone had to finish the job.

The wounded mother got herself into the kitchen area, found her husband’s loaded gun.

When Jason came back in the trailer,  the mother  shot him in the leg.

He ran away.

***

That was two years ago, and Jason almost immediately confessed to the murders. Later, he  pleaded innocence.

The evidence against him is overwhelming. The mother’s testimony. The DNA on the guns and on the floor of the trailer. His lawyers didn’t even mount a defense.

They just want to spare him from the death penalty.  They plan on introducing evidence of his grim young life. His parents put him in a mental institution when he was 11. He was raped there. Then he was raped in foster homes.

The lawyers don’t want to include allegations and charges leveled by law enforcement authorities that Jason knifed a Mexican to death and then executed a “race traitor” in Washington. That was way back in 1997.

***

In Arizona, a jury, not a judge, will decide whether Jason should be executed by lethal injection.

You’re getting a real time report. Right now, as Jason puts on his glasses one more time, then takes them off,  the jury exits to a room where it will decide whether Jason’s crimes merit consideration for the death penalty. If it decides, in the next hour or so, that the crimes do merit the death penalty, Jason’s lawyers will present evidence in the next couple of weeks indicating he is a broken soul who should live.

Jason swings in his chair. Jason watches a young girl who just walked into the courtroom.

Now the guards take Jason away. He shuffles in his leg chains. Those white socks. Those floppy black shoes.

A few minutes later, he hobbles  back in the room.  It took about 15 minutes for the jury to decide that Jason’s crimes were horrific and cruel, and merit consideration for the death penalty.

Jason just sits.

***

Shawna Forde was sentenced to death for masterminding the murders. In the next weeks, we will learn if  Jason Bush will face the same fate.

***

UPDATE: Jason Bush was sentenced to death by lethal injection. As I wrote in my verdict story in The Daily Beast, he is a suspected serial killer.

After he was sentenced to death, he looked down at his lawyer and appeared to say: “This sucks.”

TERRY GREENE STERLING ON GRATITUDE AND TALENTED FRIENDS IN ARIZONA’S IMMIGRATION WAR ZONE

I’m grateful for my family, my health, my work and my friends. Sometimes, I get to work with my friends. That is a great joy. Two dear friends have come out with remarkable projects this year, and it has been a pleasure  and honor to see their excellent work take form.

Kathy McCraine, my dear  rancher friend, has spent her life documenting the vanishing cowboy culture in the American West.  She recently published a truly remarkable book that fuses culture, oral history, food, and art — honestly, you’ve never seen anything like it.  Mark Kohler illustrated the book with stunning watercolors, and Kathy added her fine reporting and photography. The book is called  Cow Country Cooking. But it’s about a lot more than food.

(Full disclosure: I spent my childhood on the O RO ranch featured in the book.)

(More full disclosure: Kathy took a lot of pics for my book, Illegal, Life and Death in Arizona’s Immigration War Zone and I edited her copy for Cow Country Cooking.)

For several years, my friend Valeria Fernandez, an outstanding broadcast and print reporter based in Phoenix, has been working with Dan DeVivo on a remarkable documentary  called Two Americans. The main characters are  Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Kathy Figueroa,  a little girl whose parents were arrested by Sheriff Joe’s deputies in a car-wash raid.

I’ll leave you with a link to the Two Americans website and a taste of the documentary, below.

Watch this:

VILLAGE VOICE MEDIA INVESTIGATION BY TERRY GREENE STERLING TIES “CENTRIST” THINK TANKS AND GROUPS TO WHITE NATIONALISTS, REVEALS  MISLEADING REPORTS ARE USED TO ASSAULT 14TH AMENDMENT, AND SCARE THE HELL OUT OF PENNY PINCHED AMERICANS.

Among the findings:

1. The  “cost of illegal immigration” by Federation for American Immigration Reform include cost of educating American citizen children with one or more parents who are unauthorized immigrants. Economists consider education an investment, because it pays off after the child becomes an adult and begins working, paying taxes, and consuming goods. But the economic counterbalance  is missing in the FAIR report, making the cost staggering.

2. 14th Amendment “birthright citizenship” “anchor baby” movement tied to White Nationalists.

3. FAIR and sister organizations  drive immigration debate but are  tied to White Nationalists.

4. Unauthorized immigrants are not an undue burden on the economy, most economists say.

5. A special section on White Nationalist books.

6. Ties of White Nationalists to Arizona’s immigration law hardliners.

Here is the story.

Friends, I’ve spent about a month and a half working on an immigration story for Phoenix New Times, the mother ship of Village Voice Media.

Normally, these pages are reserved for some of my observations on Arizona politicking and immigration, but I’m imposing a gag rule on myself because I don’t want to spill the beans for the New Times Story.

It’s running in early December, and then I will wax eloquent once again. In the meantime, here’s a story I wrote on Sheriff Arpaio for The Daily Beast.

SUE KRENTZ, WIFE OF SLAIN BORDER RANCHER ROBERT KRENTZ, WHOSE UNSOLVED MURDER SPARKED PASSAGE OF SB 1070, ARIZONA’S IMMIGRATION LAW, WAS SERIOUSLY INJURED SATURDAY ALLEGEDLY BY A DRUNK DRIVER

Robert Krentz, a well-known borderlands rancher, was gunned down by a mysterious assailant on his ranch in late March. Although his murder has not been solved,  it was widely blamed by locals and national conservative groups on narco-smugglers in the country illegally. The murder sent a shock wave through Arizona’s legislature, and moderate Republicans who were set to vote against SB 1070, Arizona’s notorious immigration law, voted instead for its approval. Arizonans were concerned about border security in the wake of the Krentz killing, and many did not understand that not a word of SB 1070 relates to border security.  Sue Krentz, by all accounts, became a reluctant but brave spokeswoman for conservative causes, and  recently was honored with a front-row seat at the Glenn Beck rally in Washington, according to the Tucson Weekly.

She is a Catholic, and while crossing the street from the Catholic Church in Douglas on Saturday, she was hit by an allegedly drunk driver, a local named Ramon Parra Saucedo. According  to court records I looked up, he  is 69 years old. He’s had many traffic violations, including a previous DUI and a hit and run of a vehicle, the records say. He’s facing aggravated assault and DUI charges in connection with the Krentz hit-and-run.

He is an American citizen, according to press reports.

Sue Krentz was airlifted to a hospital in nearby Tucson.  Leo Banks, a personal friend of Sue Krentz, writes in the Tucson Weekly that Sue Krentz was “thrown thirty feet and suffered a broken pelvis, head and facial injuries and internal bleeding.” Banks reports that Krentz underwent  blood transfusions “and is conscious and in stable condition. “

The unsolved murder of Sue Krentz’s husband has fueled speculation on both sides. Here’s what I wrote for The Daily Beast in July.

Former State Sen. Alfredo Gutierrez says the unsolved murder probe is a case of “purposeful ignorance” and an “attempt to cover up the truth” in a prime drug- and human-smuggling corridor. Politicians talk about securing the border, he said, but they do not address the possibility that the business of Cochise County “ain’t cows, ain’t hay; it’s smuggling drugs and people.”

“Everybody knows what’s going on but nobody knows what’s going on,” said Gutierrez, one of the state’s leading Hispanic leaders.

Such a suggestion is just plain wrong, said Cochise County’s embattled sheriff, Larry Dever.

“He’s suggesting I am dirty and people I know are dirty, and if anyone can establish that, I’d invite them to give it a try,” Dever said.

Born and raised in Cochise County, the 57-year-old sheriff was a friend of Krentz’s. He said he has heard the allegations that U.S. citizens living in the area are involved in criminal activities linked with the Krentz killing, but he dismissed those claims as purely political.

Instead, Dever said, he has a suspect in Mexico and is “very, very close” to solving the case, though he said he cannot put a time frame on it.

The Krentz killing was the result of “a dog protecting his master and the master protecting dog…I think the encounter was accidental,” the sheriff theorized. “Rob was checking out his ranch. The smuggler was smuggling. They came across each other’s paths with a very good man being killed with no reason whatsoever.”

In either case, the Krentz  family has had more than its share of unexplained tragedy.

AMERICA’S TOUGHEST SHERIFF HAS MOUNTING LEGAL BATTLES WITH US DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, CHIEF DEPUTY HENDERSHOTT INVESTIGATED BY DOJ

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s mounting legal troubles with the feds in a story for  The Daily Beast. In a nutshell, two Department of Justice probes are moving fast — the first involves alleged civil rights abuses stemming from Sheriff Joe’s raids of Latino neighborhoods and workplaces; the second involves alleged retaliation against those who speak out against the sheriff, including journalists, judges and politicians. I quoted reputable attorneys who have battled the sheriff and  maintain the sheriff might get indicted.  To get the other side, I e-mailed the sheriff’s office several times. The sheriff’s official spokesman would not comment, but referred me to an attorney for the sheriff who did not return my call.
Now The Arizona Republic reveals that someone else was allegedly in the sheriff’s cross hairs — a deputy who dared contribute campaign money to a guy who was running against the sheriff. He was reportedly  Tased by another deputy while at a cemetery. No charges were filed in the internal investigation.
The Republic’s report, released today, indicates what many insiders have repeatedly told me. David Hendershott, Arpaio’s chief deputy, is allegedly behind much of the retribution and alleged abuse of power, like dead-end criminal investigations launched after the sheriff is criticized. A highranking member of Arpaio’s staff seeks an investigation of Hendershott for alleged abuse of power.
Here’s a video from the NBC affiliate Channel 12′s Kent Dana, a good reporter, on that allegation.

The sheriff, in the meantime, tooled off to New Hampshire, reportedly to polish his brand and get more campaign funds for his 2012 sheriff’s race. He had to dip into that treasure chest to bankroll TV commercials that blasted his arch-enemy County Attorney Rick Romley, who subsequently lost in the primary elections. And like  Sarah Palin, Arpaio  is a populist who’s more popular outside home state.

“To survive,” he’s fond of saying, “you’ve got to keep all your ducks in order, because everyone is after me.”