Lieutenant Palmer, the head of the Pima County Border Crime Unit, arranges for me to fly with his helicopter team down to the border. It is an instructive flight. Most of the U.S.-Mexican border in the county is part of a Native American reservation, so in practice the unit only has to worry about thirty miles of the border—but what miles. Smugglers coming across the reservation have crossed into the department’s sector and the area the Border Crime Unit covers is laced with desert trails that wind through deep ravines. …
My first encounter with the Pima County Border Crime Unit was meeting with Lieutenant Jeffrey Palmer who heads up the two squads that work across the county exclusively on crimes related to border smuggling. “We are learning as we go along,” Palmer told me. It is hard to do things by the book, when “there is no book.” One thing Palmer readily acknowledges is that they could not have fielded their unit without the support of the Department of Homeland Security. Through resources provided by Homeland Security his team obtained …
With a couple of hundred deputies, the Pima County Sheriffs office has to police most of the county and safeguard almost half of its population (about a half-a-million people). Ask them what the biggest help has been in dealing with border crime, and Bureau Chief George Heaney, a long-time veteran of the force, is quick to respond—the build-up of the Border Patrol over the last few years. The sheriff department, Heaney explains, does very little in the way of immigration enforcement. When they encounter someone suspected of being in the …
In 2007, a group of bandits looking to hijack a competitor’s drug load mistakenly opened fire on 23 illegal immigrants, including three small children, hidden in a pickup. The assailants had been camping out in a remote desert area for several days waiting to seize a drug load coming across the border. Three of the illegal border crossers were fatally wounded in the attack. After this incident, the Pima County Sheriff decided his department could no longer stand on the sidelines. Since that time the department has been trying to …
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. What goes on across the border matters to the Pima County Sheriff Department. Any of the smuggling cartel war that spills over the border falls into its lap. The Tucson Border Sector, which Pima County sits smack dab in the middle of, is currently the busiest smuggling corridor in the country. As border enforcement has been stepped up in California and Texas, land border smuggling …
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 …
TUCSON, Ariz–Finishing my visit to the border back at Nogales, Ariz., the busiest port of entry in the state, it is easy to see the biggest future enemy to border security—growth. The biggest problem in Nogales is that the cities on both side and cross-border trade exploded at the same time. The border crossing site is in the center of the town, hemmed in by the city on all sides with no room to expand. All the attention on border security has ignored one of the most important requirements for …
In a new report published today by the Goldwater Institute, Heritage education analyst Dan Lips proposed a new tax break for education savings accounts. Arizona is one of more than 30 states that offer a state income tax deduction (or credit) for contributions made into state-sponsored 529 college savings plans. Under federal law, interest accrued in these accounts is not subject to tax if it is spent on higher education expenses. The College Board estimated that 9 million Americans own 529 accounts with more than $93 billion invested altogether, as …
Today’s Free Trade Fact of the Day comes from Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry president and CEO Glenn Hamer who examines the benefits of trade with Colombia for Arizona but first notes: “Things are upside down in this country when the U.S. aids Hugo Chavez and hurts a Latin American ally such as Colombia.” Hammer continues: The Colombian trade agreement would have a direct impact on Arizona exports. Currently, Arizona is ranked 19 among the 50 states in terms of total exports in 2007. In 2007, Arizona’s export shipments …
