Gov. Doug Ducey and nine other governors met Wednesday in Texas to announce a plan they say could be immediately implemented by the Biden Administration to address the crisis at the nation’s southwest border. The meeting came after more than two weeks of silence from President Joe Biden to a Sept. 20 request for a summit with 26 governors, including Ducey.
“We’ve tried to meet with the president and be part of the solution, but he refuses. No, worse — he ignores governors, just like he’s ignoring the border and the safety of the American people,” Ducey said, adding that the governors have publicly provided a comprehensive set of policy to end the border crisis immediately. “President Biden now has everything he needs to stop this crisis.”
The 10-point plan shared by the governors calls for the continued application of Title 42 to refuse entry to individuals coming into the U.S. due to COVID-19 public health risks (Point 1) as well as the dedication of additional resources to eradicate the surge in human and drug smuggling (Point 2).
Point 3 calls on Biden to enforce all deportation laws applicable to criminally-convicted illegal aliens, while Point 4 seeks the United States’ reentry with agreements previously in place with Mexico as well as with El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras -commonly referred to as the Northern Triangle.
The fifth point would ensure states are notified by the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement anytime the federal government transports migrants, including unaccompanied children, into a state that will be called upon to provide social services.
And the sixth point demands the President and all federal officials to “state clearly and unequivocally that our country’s borders are not open” and that migrants seeking economic opportunity in America should not abuse or misuse the asylum process.
Point 7 calls for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to be provided with more resources for federal officers and agents. Meanwhile, Point 8 involves making additional judges and resources available to U.S. Immigration Courts to end the growing backlog and expedite court appearances for illegal migrants. There would also be an end to the Biden Administration’s current “catch and release policy” which makes it impossible to track immigrants who are otherwise free to travel anywhere in the country.
Under Point 9, the Migrant Protection Policy (MPP) would be reinstated in compliance with recent court rulings. MPP requires asylum seekers to return to Mexico to await court hearings. And Point 10, according to the governors’ plan, would reactivate construction contracts to finish building the border wall as well as additional security infrastructure such as lights, sensors, and access roads.
Those participating in the meeting with Ducey and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott were Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia, Gov. Brad Little of Idaho, Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa, Gov. Greg Gianforte of Montana, Gov. Pete Ricketts of Montana, Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio, Gov. Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma, and Gov. Mark Gordon of Wyoming. The attendees received a border briefing from Commissioner Steve McCraw of the Texas Department of Public Safety as well as Brandon Judd of the National Border Patrol Council.
Last month, Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels took issue with comments by U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) who claimed the southwest border is “sovereign and secure” and that anyone who says otherwise is spouting “biased and unfair narratives for political purposes.”
Dannels, whose county shares 80 miles of border with Mexico, said Jackson Lee’s comments were “100 percent not true.” To support his position, the sheriff pointed to data compiled by the federal government which showed 183,000 border crossers taken into custody from Oct. 1, 2020 through Aug. 31, 2021 by the Tucson Sector of the U.S. Border Patrol.
During that same period, an estimated 115,000 “getaways” were reported in the Tucson Sector, Dannels said.
Those were just some of the 1,473,000 encounters with undocumented immigrants at the nation’s southwest border, a 325 percent increase from the same period last year.
Governor Doug Ducey refused to heed the Biden Administration’s warning that two of his programs rewarding mask-free schooling couldn’t be using federal COVID-19 relief funds. Almost immediately after receiving the Department of Treasury’s (USDT) request to pull back his programs, Ducey issued a public statement that he would continue to defend parents’ choice. He also questioned why President Joe Biden opposes programs designed to help children who fell behind due to COVID-19 measures such as school shutdowns, mask mandates, forced quarantines, and distanced learning.
“Here in Arizona, we trust families to make decisions that are best for their children. It’s clear that President Biden doesn’t feel the same. He’s focused on taking power away from American families by issuing restrictive and dictatorial mandates for his own political gain. After the many challenges of last year, it should be our top priority to get our kids caught up. That’s exactly what this program does — it gives families in need the opportunity to access critical educational resources. Why is the president against that?”
Here in Arizona, we trust families to make decisions that are best for their children. It’s clear that President Biden doesn’t feel the same. He’s focused on taking power away from American families by issuing restrictive and dictatorial mandates for his own political gain. 1/ https://t.co/oeoNIzgOtq
American Federation for Children’s Arizona State Director, Steve Smith, asserted that he stood by Ducey’s response. He pointed out that public schools with mask mandates have access to an overwhelming majority of the federal relief funds; essentially, Ducey’s two programs are a drop in the funds bucket.
“I applaud Governor Ducey for doing all he can to provide more education options for Arizona families through this unprecedented time. It is alarming that anyone, especially elected officials whose responsibility it is to advocate for Arizonans, would not only oppose these options but then actively lobby the federal government to take these resources away from families,” said Smith. “It’s all the more frustrating considering the fact that 97 percent of the $190 billion in federal relief funds have gone to public schools that in many cases, are still sitting on it.”
Ducey’s response addressed a letter issued Tuesday by USDT Deputy Secretary Adewale Adeyemo. He told Ducey it wasn’t permissible to use federal relief funds for either the $10 million school voucher program that covers $7,000 of tuition or other educational costs at schools without mask mandates, or the $163 million grant program in which only schools without mask mandates are applicable for the grant funds.
“The purpose of the [Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds] SLFRF funds is to mitigate the fiscal effects stemming from the COVID-19 public health emergency, including by supporting efforts to stop the spread of the virus. A program or service that imposes conditions on participation or acceptance of the service that would undermine efforts to stop the spread of COVID-19 or discourage compliance with evidence-based solutions for stopping the spread of COVID-19 is not a permissible use of SLFRF funds.”
Adeyemo warned Ducey that he had a 30-day deadline to respond with proposals for remediation. Otherwise, USDT said it would recoup the funds.
Prior to his appointment, Adeyemo worked within the high ranks of BlackRock: the world’s largest and arguably most powerful multinational investment management corporation. Adeyemo served as senior advisor and chief of staff to CEO Larry Fink.
USDT began investigating Ducey’s programs at the request of Representative Greg Stanton (D-AZ-09) in mid-August. Stanton wrote to USDT Secretary Janet Yellen to issue an opinion on the programs.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
Gov. Doug Ducey has secured the funding necessary to launch Arizona’s new Cyber Command Center, and during a ceremony at the Arizona Department of Public Safety’s Arizona Counter Terrorism Information Center (ACTIC) on Monday he equated cybersecurity with homeland security.
“Our society is becoming increasingly interconnected through technology, and cybersecurity has become one of the most important issues facing Arizona,” Ducey said Monday. “This new command center will be critical in protecting Arizonans and ensuring our cyber infrastructure remains safe and secure.”
According to the governor, the state has spent nearly $15 million in the last year to address cyber threats and implement best practices. The results are impressive, with the Arizona Department of Homeland Security detecting and alerting on about 68 million threats and protected state websites from over 800,000 attacks in September.
The new Cyber Command Center will be Arizona’s headquarters for coordinating statewide cybersecurity operations, and will serve as a central location for cybersecurity professionals and local, state and federal agencies to prevent and respond to cyberattacks. Several programs will be run out of the command center, including the Arizona Counter Terrorism Information Center, a joint effort created in 2004 among DPS, AZ DHS, the FBI, and other agencies to support Arizona’s homeland security efforts.
Ducey has been successful the last few years in securing funding to address cybersecurity threats which impact not only state agencies, but also local governments, the private sector, educational institutions, and citizens.
In Fiscal Year 2020, the governor secured legislative approval to add $2.9 million to the Arizona Department of Administration’s Statewide Information Security and Privacy Office. The money was earmarked to enhance the operations of the office and purchase additional cybersecurity controls to combat cyberthreats on state IT assets, according to Ducey’s office.
He has also tapped $9 million in FY2020 and FY2022 to improve the Department of Education’s school finance system which distributes billions in state and federal funding to Arizona’s public schools. In addition, nearly $500,000 of funding will be available to the Arizona Department of Emergency and Military Affairs (DEMA) in FY2022 to establish a cyber task force to perform cybersecurity prevention and response activities on behalf of the state, according to the governor’s office.
That is on top of a one-time $300,000 credit to the National Guard Cyber Response Revolving Fund to allow the National Guard to engage in cyberattack prevention, response, and support activities for the state and other public entities.
Arizona is not the only state making cybersecurity a priority, and public records show many of the projects across the country are being paid for by federal funds under the CARES Act.
According to the Center for Digital Government, the CARES Act provided more than $150 billion in March 2020 to state and local governments to address cybersecurity issues brought about by IT budget constraints, modernization issues, and new challenges such as remote work and distance learning. In December, Congress later extended the deadline for utilizing the funding after some states complained of not being able to get projects quickly operational due to time and staff constraints.
“This extension is critical because our research indicates state, local and county governments still have billions of federal dollars left to spend,” according to a briefing by the Center for Digital Government, a national research and advisory institute on information technology policies and best practices in state and local government. “Doing so will increase their resilience, streamline constituents’ access to critical services, and safeguard critical government systems and all the valuable public data they collect.”
In North Carolina, $4.5 million of CARES funding was allocated to create a shared cybersecurity infrastructure for its Department of Public Instruction. The project also facilitates district cybersecurity monitoring and support,, which according to the briefing “has become even more essential as the schools in the state experience a surge in ransomware attacks.”
Meanwhile, the briefing notes Oklahoma has used its federal aid for a secondary data center with higher availability and advanced disaster recovery capabilities. State officials call the investment “critical” to ensuring the capability to deliver core public services in an emergency.
Idaho, Montana, and Texas are examples of other western states utilizing CARES funds for cybersecurity projects.
Arizona Senate candidate Blake Masters offered a taste of San Francisco, California street life in his latest campaign video, claiming that the rampant homelessness, drug addiction, poverty, and crime there were Senator Mark Kelly’s (D-AZ) goals for Arizona.
“This is San Francisco; it’s disgusting. This is what Mark Kelly wants Arizona to look like: high taxes, crime, drugs through the roof – it’s insane,” said Masters. “[W]e’ve got to make sure that California stops at the Arizona border.”
None of Masters’ campaign videos have cost anything; Masters explained to critics that his friends filmed the videos “for free.”
Masters told AZ Free News that San Francisco governance has essentially legalized crime and drugs in the city. He recalled noticing car after car with shattered windows, the result of criminals who “smash and grab” to loot the vehicles parked in the streets. Masters said that some of these issues were present when he’d lived in the area, but not to that degree.
Masters opined that policy was to blame – not a lack of income or opportunity. He pointed out one of the finer, wealthier neighborhoods in the city, Pacific Heights, and said that more of San Francisco used to uphold that standard of living long ago.
“It’s the failed government [that caused the squalor]. And I think most of the city is quickly becoming what you saw in my video and less like Pacific Heights,” said Masters. “They [the homeless] are victims of the city [….] I don’t think anybody on the political left is doing them any favors.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi didn’t respond to our inquiries as to when she last visited San Francisco. The speaker’s last publicized visit there was last February in Chinatown. Pelosi had visited Chinatown to encourage tourism in the earliest stages of the COVID-19 outbreak. After that, Pelosi made various stops for her personal needs – such as her clandestine, maskless trip to a hair salon in September.
Masters said his team also filmed an interview with one one of the locals living on the streets. He’d spoken with an aspiring rapper, “T-Bone,” who gave a firsthand account of living under progressive policies. Masters said that his team may publish that interview.
“He’s trying to get back to doing gigs and my sense is, with the high cost to succeed, it’s really hard to break out of [that environment] once you’re in it. I think it’s really telling when there’s no one there who thinks it’s working well,” explained Masters.
Masters’ campaign video wasn’t his first recent tour to areas afflicted by Democratic policy. Earlier this week, Masters visited the border in Cochise County. His Twitter thread about the tour stirred up controversy with Democrats, who accused Masters of exaggerating when he referenced Border Patrol lingo to call the area a “kill zone.”
A little border patrol dark humor – these corridors are known as “kill zones” because when they stretch for miles, it exposes their vehicles to potential ambush. This is federal land […] in the Huachuca mountains. The federal park rangers, under Biden admin instruction, don’t enforce immigration law. Cartels have more or less free reign to move people and drugs through. Border Patrol is spread too thin. They try but with limited resources and zero political support, it’s hard. Often they’re literally not allowed to do their jobs. Sheriff’s deputies can detain illegals carrying drugs or weapons, but basically have to let everyone else go. In the Tucson Sector alone, there have been 183,000 arrests of illegal aliens in 2021. (85% of them single adults, from more than 100 different countries, and most were released back into the U.S.) Plus 115,000 confirmed getaways. And obviously many more got through undetected.
Look at all the steel just sitting there on the right. On Jan 20, Biden ordered border wall construction stopped.
A little border patrol dark humor — these corridors are known as “kill zones” because when they stretch for miles, it exposes their vehicles to potential ambush pic.twitter.com/53uKkMUwlh
The Pima County Democratic Party responded to Masters’ account with claims that the border region was actually peaceful, and claimed that no border crisis existed.
“Hey @bgmasters – this is actually what our border region looks like,” stated the organization. “It is not some imaginary, cosplay, video game, that you like to refer to as a “Kill Zone” – it is a diverse, beautiful, and thriving community. #BorderTown #TheBigBorderLie #ThereIsNoBorderCrisis #Qnuts[.]”
AZ Free News spoke with Border Patrol to inquire about the “kill zone” terminology. Border Sergeant Tim Williams expanded further on what Masters stated. Technically, law enforcement refer to areas like where Masters toured as a “kill zone” or “fatal funnel” because they can only move forward and backward. If officers are ambushed, their movements are limited.
“We call it a ‘fatal funnel’ or ‘kill zone,’ when you get stuck in a hallway and you can’t move side to side and can only move forward or backward. That’s what I was explaining to the candidate: when you’re here, you’re driving down the road with a border wall on the south side and access fencing on the north side,” explained Williams. “They’ve created an officer safety issue [there].”
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
Arizona parents promptly pushed back against the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) announcement Monday that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and U.S. Attorney’s Offices would investigate the trend of protests against school boards and other staff. The DOJ indicated that it would create a task force to accomplish this goal.
In a memorandum, Garland cited a “disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence” against public school staff nationwide. Garland explained that the FBI and law enforcement leaders would brainstorm reporting mechanisms and strategies to address violence, threats of violence, harassment, intimidation against public school staff. Nowhere in either the announcement or letter did the DOJ or Garland call those responsible for the purported spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats, “domestic terrorists.”
“Threats against public servants are not only illegal, they run counter to our nation’s core values. Those who dedicate their time and energy to ensuring that our children receive a proper education in a safe environment deserve to be able to work without fear for their safety,” wrote Garland. “The Department takes these incidents seriously and is committed to using its authority and resources to discourage these threats, identify them when they occur, and prosecute them when appropriate.”
A coalition of moms, West Valley Parents Uniting, said it was hypocritical for Attorney General Merrick Garland and the Biden Administration to highlight parents as a national threat while largely ignoring the rising rates of violent crime, human trafficking, and migrant encounters. Founders Heather Rooks and Devon Updegraff-Day submitted a joint statement to AZ Free News in response to the DOJ announcement.
“Administrators, school board members, and teachers are not the victims. The children are the victims! They have always been the victims; our children have been used as pawns for twisted political games for decades and parents have finally had enough […] The Biden Administration can issue warnings to parents and threaten legal recourse all they want; parents will never be made silent! Parents have the right and will always have the right to speak out against ANYTHING they deem inappropriate or detrimental to their child’s well-being; that is what being a parent is all about. The Biden Administration needs to get their tail out from between their legs and fight against real threats in America and stop trying to create distractions. Criminal conduct behavior is widespread, but one of the few places where it is not occurring is at school board meetings!”
While some issued formal statements, others opted to issue a prompt response on Twitter.
Pam Kirby, Republican Party of Arizona and Latinos for Trump Advisory Board Member, promised to continue rallying at school board meetings.
Another user accused the DOJ of pandering to teachers’ unions.
“Wow, all it took was one poorly drafted complaint letter from a teachers union, and DOJ responds. Without evidence. Just repeats what it has been told. We [see] who you work for.”
Yet another user claimed it was hypocritical of Democrats to crack down on parents at school board meetings but condone the behavior of illegal immigrants and activists who chased and filmed Senator Kyrsten Sinema into a bathroom.
“While leftists in office applaud those that chased, harassed [and] recorded a female elected official in a bathroom, they call parents using the normal channels of public meetings ‘radical extremists’ and accuse them of ‘infiltrating’ open meetings.”
The Biden Administration’s DOJ hasn’t issued any similar statements to other, more organized movements like the local Antifa-aligned groups, whose members have exhibited repeat patterns of actively threatening and engaging in violence.
Opposition to the DOJ’s announcement even came from some school officials. One vocal advocate for affording full transparency to parents, Litchfield Elementary School District (LESD) Board Member Jeremy Hoenack, told AZ Free News that he was disappointed with the DOJ’s response.
“It’s highly disturbing that the President’s Administration seems to think that parents don’t count,” said Hoenack.
Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco defended the DOJ’s initiative before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday. The committee hearing itself wasn’t focused on the DOJ announcement, but Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) insisted that Monaco answer for it.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
