Kelly Anderson Wright

Forget the politicians’ clever sound bites and soulful promises: Our federal government doesn’t care about us. Despite our pleading to five presidential administrations, the Feds have failed to protect our international border with Mexico. Arizona just can’t take it anymore.

If you want something done right, do it yourself.

Can you blame them? Arizonans have endured 25 years of steadily increasing border crime, violence, drug trafficking, kidnapping and murder. Arizona lawmakers finally took matters into their own hands and passed a state law that mirrors federal law, making it a crime to be an illegal immigrant in Arizona. Their logic is, if the Feds won’t enforce the immigration laws already on the books, they will, in their state. Arizona tienes cajones, hombre! (Translation: Arizona has balls, dude!)

Think Arizona has gone too far? According to our own federal Justice Department, three border patrol agents a day are attacked by foreigners deliberately entering our country illegally, and most are criminals fleeing Mexico. In Phoenix, one person is kidnapped every 35 hours by illegals.

For the past 15 years, Arizona has begged the federal government to secure their state’s international border, which is explicitly the Feds’ job, not Arizona‘s. Arizona Governor Jan Brewer sent five letters to President Obama asking for help, and he answered not a one. Arizona decided that the lives, liberty and safety of its citizens were just too important to ignore. Makes sense to me, and to Arizonans: 70 percent support their state’s new immigration control law.

Arizona’s law does not give police the right to harass Latinos or arrest people willy-nilly. The law clearly directs local law enforcement officers to make a “reasonable attempt” to determine the immigration status of persons they come into contact with, when said persons are suspected of being involved in some other crime. Arizona police officers cannot stop people randomly on the street and “ask for their papers,” as the political naysayers and lamestream liars have touted. Clearly, those people haven’t read the bill.

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Arizona authorities simply want to stem the rampant increase in crime committed by people who are here illegally. According to the Justice Department’s own report, assaults on border patrol agents are up 46 percent: Three officers a day are attacked by drug or alien smugglers, with the clear intent to harm or kill them. Kidnappings are now common in Phoenix, one every 35 hours, mostly among drug and alien smuggling families in Arizona who have already crossed the Mexican border illegally.

Think Arizona’s problem doesn’t affect you or someone you know? One out of every five teenagers in the United States uses drugs provided by Mexican drug trafficking organizations (DTOs), which now dominate the U.S. illegal drug market, thanks to our federal government’s weak border controls.

“Mexican DTOs continue to represent the single greatest drug trafficking threat to the United States,” according to the Justice Department report. “Mexican DTOs, already the predominant wholesale suppliers of illicit drugs in the United States, are gaining even greater strength in eastern drug markets where Columbian DTO strength is diminishing.”

In Nevada, illegal immigrant criminals account for more than 10 percent of the state’s prison budget. In 2007, Nevada spent more than $31 million on incarcerated illegal aliens who committed crimes against Nevadans. The Feds reimbursed Nevada for just $2.8 million of those costs. In the same year, Reno’s Washoe County spent $2.23 million jailing criminals who were here illegally. The Feds only reimbursed us $555,290.

Arizona is doing what it needs to do to protect its citizens and all of us, because our federal government refuses to put the lives, liberty and safety of Americans first. Arizona should be commended, not condemned.

Hopefully more border states will follow suit, to help protect us all.

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