Arizona Border Cluelessness

I guess you have to just shake your head. Dana Milbank's piece can have only been hatched from the Beltway journalism cocoon, "Headless bodies and other immigration tall tales in Arizona:"

Jan Brewer has lost her head.

The Arizona governor, seemingly determined to repel every last tourist dollar from her pariah state, has sounded a new alarm about border violence. "Our law enforcement agencies have found bodies in the desert either buried or just lying out there that have been beheaded," she announced on local television.

Ay, caramba! Those dark-skinned foreigners are now severing the heads of fair-haired Americans? Maybe they're also scalping them or shrinking them or putting them on a spike.

But those in fear of losing parts north of the neckline can relax. There's not a follicle of evidence to support Brewer's claim.

The Arizona Guardian Web site checked with medical examiners in Arizona's border counties and the coroners said they had never seen an immigration-related beheading. I called and e-mailed Brewer's press office requesting documentation of decapitation; no reply.

Brewer's mindlessness about headlessness is just one of the immigration falsehoods being spread by Arizona politicians. Border violence on the rise? Phoenix becoming the world's No. 2 kidnapping capital? Illegal immigrants responsible for most police killings? The majority of those crossing the border are drug mules? All wrong.

This matters, because it means the entire premise of the Arizona immigration law is a fallacy. Arizona officials say they've had to step in because federal officials aren't doing enough to stem increasing border violence. The scary claims of violence, in turn, explain why the American public supports the Arizona crackdown.

More at the link.Actually, I've never checked the statistics, which according to Milbank show beyond a shadow of a doubt that Arizonans are getting fearmongered by the state's leadership. (And if I did check 'em, I'd be sure to rely on a bit more than the folks at the Arizona Republic.) The problem is that while Brewer may be misspoken, even the administration has warned tourists to stay out of the national parks in Arizona, since federal authorities couldn't guarantee their safety. No word about that from Milbank. And of course, if crime's really been "flat" for the last decade, then maybe it's become more concentrated at the border without changing the data? Something also not considered by Milbank.

Of course, I've spoken to folks who actually live on the border, and they'll tell you folks in the elite Beltway cocoon haven't clue. And watch this clip with Grif Jenkins. The report dates to just about the time I met Jenkins in Tempe at the end of May:

See also, "Ranchers Alarmed by Killing Near Border."

And speaking of evidence, see the Sierra Vista Herald, "Brewer says misinformation plays role on every level with immigration law."