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.

THE BORDER REPORT

I'd hate to be a cop in Arizona about now. The Arizona state Senate just passed a bill that requires cops, under threat of lawsuit, to enforce federal immigration laws. I blame the Feds; particularly Homeland Security Sec. Janet Napolitano. The bill makes it a misdemeanor to be an illegal immigrant in Arizona. It requires cops to check immigration status if they develop a reasonable suspicion that a person is in the country illegally. The bill, Senate Bill 1070, passed 35-21 in the Arizona House of Representatives last night. Among other factors, it requires cops to enforce federal immigration laws if they believe a person is in the country illegally. They're not supposed to use race to develop reasonable suspicion but how could they avoid using the color of a man's skin as a preliminary determinant? Police departments can also be sued if they don't comply with the new enforcement powers. Of course, they can also be sued for racial profiling if they can't prove that race wasn't the only factor in pulling up to check the papers of a man. And they can be sued if citizens think they're not enforcing immigration laws. Arrest warrants no longer apply, either. If a cop thinks a person committed a crime worth being deported over, they won't need to obtain a warrant. You may disagree, but in my opinion, the new rules, expected to be approved by Gov. Jan Brewer, create two classes of human being in Arizona and God help you if a cop thinks you might fit into the second class. I also don't dismiss the new rules as mere racism. In fact, I put the responsibility squarely on the shoulders of the U.S. government. I've been writing about the issues that have turned Arizona into the North American concourse it has become since 2003. Again and again and again, federal ineptitude and corruption have taken over the issue. You have U.S. Border Patrol officials who capitalize on increased enforcement budgets to line their own pockets. They have taken per diem kickbacks from flooding sections of Arizona with new agents needing places to live (Douglas, Ariz.). They have sold technology contracts worth millions to companies run by their own daughters (Naco, Ariz. and  El Paso). They spend money needlessly on armored personnel carriers (Tucson). They have engaged in phenomenal projects like the virtual tower mess that they then paid millions of dollars into for years only to pull back at the end and scrap the entire program (Southern Arizona). U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, for years, allowed local cops like the Phoenix Police Department to manage their own affairs at a time when the city was being inundated by hundreds of home invasions, narco-executions and kidnappings every year. The Feds waste their time and resources chasing drug mules through central Arizona while Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada's familymembers attend schools in Phoenix. A regional drug trafficker for the Juárez Cartel, Adán Salazar Zamorano, recently purchased a home in north Tucson, about ten miles from me, in fact. They neglected the entire southeast corner of Arizona at the border with New Mexico and Chihuahua since 2006. That neglect culminated in the murder of a good man, a rancher in the area, last month, Robert Krentz. Homeland Security Sec. Janet Napolitano has held the administrator position for more than a year now. As former governor, Napolitano knew of the failings of federal law enforcement in Arizona. I can't begin to count the number of times I interviewed her on the matter of the lack of federal involvement. As governor, she also vetoed bills like this one numerous times, saying the border was a federal issue. Well, Janet; now what? Now you're a Fed. You leave 388 miles of lateral border between Tucson and Yuma Sectors bereft of new ideas and new technologies, applying the same enforcement standards as your predecessor, standards that failed then and failed now. The only difference is that at the time you were the governor and could dismiss bills like 1070 as racism, politicking and douchebaggery. You knew where this headed, especially when you accepted the new appointment, leaving the Republican, Brewer, in charge of Arizona. Esta gente no tiene vergüenza.

THE BORDER REPORT

So, the same day that the Mexican Army pulls out of Cd. Juarez, U.S. agents start spreading the rumor that the Juarez Cartel has been defeated?

Anyone want to continue disagreeing with my assessment that the Sinaloa Federation is being protected and supported by the Mexican government?

It's been clear for some time; from arrests like that of El Jabali last winter to the public relations campaign published by Proceso Magazine this week to the dissension within the Mexican Congress against what even two months ago was seen as an obvious move to protect Joaquin El Chapo Guzman.

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THE BORDER REPORT

He looks damned good for 62 years old; chesty, thick working man arms, that haughty look, the upturned chin. Life must be pretty good for a man supposedly on the run. Pablo Escobar was burning piles of money to keep warm; he was over-weight, out-of-shape, paranoid and thoroughly spooked when he went down. Ismael El Mayo Zambada? Not so much. By now I’ve had a chance to re-read Mayo's interview a few times, I’m sure you have, too. He reveals little; or rather, the interview reveals little. He denies that Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán ever married that beauty queen. He denies the importance of Chapo’s placement on Forbes’ list of billionaires. He even denies that he himself is a drug lord, let alone one of Mexico’s most powerful. The old man’s been running circles around the Justice Department since the Reagan Administration, after all. There is little in terms of the braggadocio you might expect from a man of his stature in the world of organized crime. Instead, he claims he is a cattle rancher and a farmer but if he can open a business in the United States, he’d like to do so (that can also be interpreted as if he can open a “negotiation with” the United States, he’d like to do so … ) Oh, and the war on drugs is lost. In fact, his interview with Proceso Magazine's Julio Scherer reads much like the interviews conducted with Eduardo Arellano Felix in 2002 ("No ganaron. Estoy aquí, y nada ha cambiado,"), Sandra Avíla Beltrán in 2009 ("La violencia está en el propio Gobierno." also with Scherer, now that I think about it) and the wife of Vicente Carrillo Leyva, Celia Karina, (Yo digo que el Gobierno debería agarrar a las personas que realmente hacen cosas. Pero agarrar inocentes para decir que están trabajando en el narcotráfico) eso es una injusticia.) Also with Proceso. The only question I have is why now? Mayo approached Proceso with the interview offer, because, he says, he's always wanted to meet Scherer. And it's been taken up on this site and in many Mexican media, that this was an individual decision perhaps done so for personal reasons. Because his son is in prison, maybe because he's sick, maybe just old and tired and his perspective has changed. I disagree. Mayo Zambada is part of a syndicate, he is not a lone operator. This is not El Viceroy Vicente Carrillo or Fernando Sanchez Arellano. This is a senior member of a powerful cartel protected, whether through neglect or complicity, by the government of Mexico. Mayo Zambada did not wake up one day in February and decide he wanted to meet Julio Scherer. This was calculated, the question is, by whom? The Sinaloa Federation or the Mexican government? Start with the publication. Proceso has become an odd little magazine over the years. Started in 1976, the magazine had a near-vendetta for the PAN political party, attacking Pres. Vicente Fox Quesada nearly every chance they had. They invented quotes putting Fox in a negative light; went after Marta Sahagún, Fox's wife, and publicly declared that her son was meeting with representatives of Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán. Then in 2008, they went after Sonora Gov. Eduardo Bours Castelo. I'll never forget that particular story for this sentence (recall that Bours' family owns Bachoco, the largest poultry company in Mexico):

"Y avicultores de Ciudad Obregón y de Hermosillo comentan al reportero que la empresa Bachoco opera, con licencias oficiales, la importación de efedrina. Esta sustancia –comúnmente utilizada para la elaboración de medicamentos (entre ellos los antigripales) y por cuyo manejo discrecional saltó a la fama el empresario chino Zhenli Ye Gon– sirve para mezclarla con el alimento que consumen los pollos criados por Bachoco. El consumo de efedrina permite que los pollos no duerman en un lapso de al menos ocho semanas. De esa manera, el pollito 'se la pasa comiendo de día y de noche', según relata a Proceso un empresario avícola."

Translation: Growers from Obregón and Hermosillo tell the reporter that Bachoco conducts, under official license, the importation of ephedrine. This substance, commonly produced for cold medicine – and other discretionary uses like that leading to the fame of Zhenli Ye Gon – is also served in the food consumed by the poultry grown by Bachoco. The consumption ensures that the chickens don't sleep for at least eight weeks. In this manner, 'the fowl keeps eating day and night ... "

What do Bours and Fox have in common? Or rather, what did they have in common? Bours served as the governor's representative to the Security Committee; the committee that in 2005, agreed to Operation México Seguro. Remember that one? That's the federal operation that started the militarization fiasco now over-taking Juárez, Tamaulipas and Nuevo Leon. In 2006, Bours backed Felipe Calderón for the presidency, pulling away from his own party, the PRI. His backing, one of only three PRI governors to do so, but also one of the most powerful, ensured Calderón's victory against Andres Lopez Obradór in an otherwise very tight election. And now El Mayo surfaces. I can nearly understand why he would be chosen as the consiglierie. Historically, he's been the calmest of the crowd; he's no Chapo, he was only tangentially connected to the Guadalajara Cartel blamed for the murder of the DEA agent in the 1980s. He's never done anything outlandish like introduce the Zetas into the political theater of Mexico's narcotics business. He's as good a diplomat as the Mexican cartel figures could hope for. In many ways, and it's been pointed out by readers of this site already, he's also a good front-man for a certain character sketch of Mexican drug lords. Humble, independent, rugged; born of the Sierra, with his wife and his daughters, and he cries for his incarcerated son and drops beautiful quotes about the freedom offered by the heavens. Very much a public relations move. But was it one conducted by the Sinaloa Federation or the government of Mexico? And that is the question we should be asking.