The Heritage Foundation - Leadership for America

Heritage senior fellow James Carafano recently traveled to the U.S.-Mexico border and filed a series of reports which will be featured here throughout the week.

It is the fastest growing county in Arizona, with a population of over a million. Pima County’s other mark of distinction is that has more border with Mexico than any other part of the state—about 130 miles of it. All that might suggest that Pima County (over 9,000 square miles straddling the south-central part of the Arizona) would be bearing the brunt of border security violence. At first glance that does not seem to be the case in January 2008 there were about 1,000 crimes reported in the county including one homicide. Numbers for January 2009 are about the same. But, numbers don’t tell you everything, I spent the day with the Pima County Sheriff Department getting the real low down on what’s going on.