THE BORDER REPORT

Did the Republican governor of Arizona knowingly use a murder that had nothing to do with random Mexican border violence at all to propagate the passage of a state law criminalizing illegal immigration? Did her Democrat opponent, the Arizona Attorney General, also allow that bad information to fester? Perhaps. Follow me for a moment; and please keep in mind that the governor is about to face off against her own attorney general for the governor's seat. And the A.G. is ahead in the polls.

The Arizona Daily Star in Tucson smoked a great story this morning; saying the killing of a Southern Arizona rancher was not random and that Cochise County Sheriff's deputies are looking for an individual in the U.S., not in Mexico. (Long sidenote: The paper's story has since been changed; this morning the headline stated the suspect was an American. The Cochise County Sheriff's Department says that's wrong; nationality is unknown. Now, The Associated Press, citing anonymous sources, says the suspect is a Mexican national. Important to remember that it's not the reporter's fault. The paper pulled that one then fixed it. It's rare but it happens.)

If you'll recall, last week the sheriff's department put out a burglary alert about Alejandro Chavez-Vasquez, a 36-year-old Agua Prieta resident. This seemed curious because it was the first time I or anyone could recall the sheriff's department putting out a "person of interest" alert for a series of burglaries in a town of 250 people. Chavez is suspected of pulling burglaries in the area where Krentz's ranch lies. And perhaps he is suspected of more, that hasn't yet been revealed.

Robert Krentz was murdered March 27, on his ranch in southeastern Arizona. His death prompted much of the latest rancor surrounding the issue of how to control the Arizona border. Gov. Jan Brewer used the murder as the sounding board to call for an increase of federal border security. Though she never tied Krentz's murder to Arizona's new law criminalizing illegal immigration directly, her signing the bill came weeks after the murder and she certainly never negated the murder's presence hanging over the political climate of the controversial bill. Last month, she approved the spending of $10 million in discretionary stimulus funding to border area law enforcement agencies and called for National Guard training missions on the border. Before Krentz's killing, Brewer's administration paid little to no public attention to the border.

The question now becomes whether Arizona state officials knew the sheriff's deputies were looking for someone in the U.S., someone who had a motive to kill Krentz. But if these government officials knew and presented enough evidence to convince the newspaper that it was true, then it is safe to assume state officials also knew. And if state officials knew Krentz's murder had nothing to do with illegal immigration, at least in the sense of rabid burreros randomly killing Americans, then Brewer also had to have known. And so did her Attorney General. Who is also running for governor.

Which leads me right back to the question I usually reserve for Mexican government officials and Feds: What are you hiding, cuz this don't smell right at all.