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.

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THE BORDER REPORT

I've been asked by several people why I didn't cover any of the May Day marches in either Tucson or Phoenix today. My answer is, what's the damned point? The Arizona Daily Star reports 7,000 marching in Tucson today. The Arizona Republic has this gem: "Anger over Immigration Laws Drives U.S. Rallies," saying 50,000 marched in Los Angeles (did noone march in Phoenix, the Republic's home turf?). On a desmádre-istic sidenote, Shakira met with the mayor and chief of police of Phoenix and why the hell the powerhouses of the sixth largest city in the U.S. made time to meet with a singer on a last minute visit is something only the most degraded part of my imagination will contemplate. I'm surprised the ICE SAC for Arizona didn't try to get in on this. Where were these "activists" and marchers a month ago when 1070 was still being considered in the Arizona legislature? They march against a bill that has already been signed into law when they should have been actively opposing the bill's signing as far back as the beginning of the year when it's finer points were being debated. There will be those who would say it's the media's fault for not bringing attention to the bill; I say nonsense. The media, including the Star, the Republic, The AP, the Phoenix New Times, (they covered its pending arrival exhaustively), the East Valley Tribune, and even bloggers have been writing about this bill for months. The goddamned thing has been floating around since at least January when a Senate research committee picked it up. Hell, it was on television. No, I suspect what happened was good old-fashioned voter apathy. This other story caught my eye earlier this past week: Five states, Texas, Arizona, Florida, California and New York, (or, about 20 percent of all of us) are now in danger of losing Congressional seats because not enough residents bothered to fill out their Census forms. People aren't paying attention, they're not watching what's going on around them; even in this age of social media, Twitter, blogs, and 24 hour news everywhere you turn, people are not paying attention. Then, after the fact, when it is all said and done, when the only way to change 1070 is in the courtroom, everybody hits the streets in outrage and protest; screaming that Gov. Jan Brewer is a Nazi and blah blah blah. I'm no fan of 1070 for my own reasons, most having to do with the threats against the Fourth Amendment, but the governor is not a Nazi. She moved completely in the open; so did the Senate, so did Russell Pearce who'd loudly clamored for his bill for months, so did the House. They weren't paying attention. So no, I'm not going to cover this feel-good irrelevance of a post-situation street festival. Pon Atencíon. There are powerful people out there trying to screw you; then you hold a march and feel you've accomplished something. That's embarrassing and with self-indulgent behavior like that, you deserve whatever they throw at you. Don't complain now.

THE BORDER REPORT

Amnesty International released its report yesterday documenting abuses of Central American migrants passing through Mexico, throwing some brutal criticisms at Pres. Felipe Calderón's Administration at a very awkward time. Among the report's findings, more than half of the migrants reported abuses by public officials and an estimated 60 percent of women and girls reported being sexually assaulted while trying to cross through Mexico. On the one hand, good on Amnesty for speaking up but where were you guys when journalists, activists and rights groups throughout the Western Hemisphere have been clamoring for your attention on the matter throughout much of the past decade? I myself have written stories documenting these abuses as far back as 2004; some fine journalists have reported on the assaults for years prior to that; trying to show what these Central American migrants go through trying to cross through Mexico. For at least three years, the Gulf Cartel's Zeta faction owned migrant smuggling through east Texas and Mexico's Guatemalan border, kidnapping, beating, extorting and killing migrants. On the Southern Arizona border, people still speak of a "Casa Verde" in Nogales, Sonora, where young girls were being taken from Central Americans and trafficked in a ring that an old CISEN agent, Jose Nemesio Lugo, tried to bust up before his subsequent murder in 2007, Mexico City. Then there's the politics of the matter. Though I doubt they'll admit it; I don't think it's an accident that Amnesty released its findings days after Mexico started clamoring about Arizona SB 1070, the state's new law criminalizing illegal immigration. Mexico has roundly criticized the bill, announcing a travel alert for Arizona while Sonora Gov. Guillermo Padrés, in protest of 1070, cancelled an Arizona-Sonora Commission annual meetup that has existed for a half century. Amnesty has effectively, and rightly, diminished concerns of forthcoming abuses by law enforcement in Arizona, and placed the focus back where the most grotesque forms of abuse already exist, in Mexico. In the end, I won't minimize the entire sphere of blame in the abuse of people heading north. It's no more Mexico's fault, as a whole, than it is the migrants', or the U.S. employer who hires them on, or the consumer who chooses to remain happily oblivious. We're all responsible; we've allowed illegal immigration to become a standard practice sustaining our way of life and our economies. That's the embarrassment of the Western Hemisphere and I hope history remembers us for it. But Amnesty's report certainly puts into context the threat against Hispanics that 1070 presents. Never mind "papers, please," here we have rape. Protest that. Mexico, and Hispanics living in the U.S. are outraged that a threat against them exists here. Central Americans, who, admittedly make up a very small slice of the illegal migrant population (U.S. Border Patrol statistics report about seven percent of illegal migrants captured are Central American), are, as usual, ignored. Over the past few days, singers like Shakira, cities like San Francisco, and "activists" have taken to the streets in Phoenix, and, let's be honest, the Internet, raging against 1070 as if by eliminating this questionable law, the rights of the illegal migrant are somehow restored. 1070 has become a distraction to the very real situation of exploitative servitude. Amnesty International just brought us back to reality. Whether anyone listens remains to be seen. A cursory check of my news feed this morning suggests few will.

THE BORDER REPORT

The outrage has simmered throughout the country for a few days now, with activists calling for a boycott of Arizona after the passage of the first state bill in the nation that criminalizes illegal immigrants. The loudest voices seem to think the status quo of sustaining what's essentially a slave labor class is a solution. Well, no; it's not.

Most of the economic threats I'm reading about this morning  are weak bluster with no teeth, particularly the loudest voices, the San Francisco, Calif., Board of Supervisors and the League of United Latin American Citizens.

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THE BORDER REPORT

Oh, come on. Like she wasn't gonna sign it. Of course she was going to sign it. Her re-election depended on it. I'll go you one further: And the woman knows the bill's going to get tossed in the trash for its illegal measures. The Phoenix Republicans love her; the Democrats will call the bill's subsequent destruction a victory. She'll get re-elected and the border will continue churning over billions of illicit dollars, unhindered until the next crisis. For now, Gov. Jan Brewer signed Senate Bill 1070 into law this afternoon, creating one of the most draconian environments against non-white residents I've ever seen. I'm assuming the challenges citing the Fourth Amendment are going to be introduced in federal court by Monday, if they haven't already. I hope so, anyway. At this point in the game, the only situation that is going to keep this law from being exercised by the cops is going to be a federal injunction. This is where I see the lawsuits playing out: One of the conditions for Senate Bill 1070 is that race must not be the only factor in a cop's determination to ask an individual for his papers. However, and this is where the lawyers will work it:  they can couple race with something as simple as "driving in a corridor known for human smuggling", to establish reasonable suspicion to pull you over. Try defining a corridor in Arizona that isn't used for human smuggling. Interstate 10? I-85 from Sonoyta to Phoenix? I-19 from Nogales to Tucson? I-80 from Douglas to the 10? Gov. Brewer's response to the new police powers?

"We have to trust our law enforcement,'' Brewer said. "Police officers are going to be respectful. They know what their jobs are, they've taken an oath. And racial profiling is illegal."

Of course they are. I've said it before and I'll say it again: This is the choice police departments now face – be sued for racial profiling or be sued for not enforcing immigration law. Good luck with that. This poor state is facing a $2.6 billion deficit in 2011; last month, the legislature voted $1.1 billion in cuts, including closing most of the state parks, eliminating a childrens' health program that leaves 47,000 low-income children without coverage, slicing into public schools by as much as $780 per student in some districts, and even, oh delicious irony, cutting into law enforcement. Arizona may lead the nation in identity theft but the Department of Public Safety's ID Theft Task Force was one of the law enforcement units eliminated in the budget last month. I hope you kept a stash of cash tucked away somewhere for the Attorney General's office, Governor. My guess is a legal bill is going to come due very, very soon.