by Matthew Holloway | Dec 15, 2024 | News
By Matthew Holloway |
John R. Modlin, the Chief Patrol Agent (CPA) of the U.S. Border Patrol Tucson Sector released a statement on Tuesday announcing that the Douglas Station Field Training Unit tracked, located, and apprehended three illegal immigrants west of Douglas, AZ. They were the most recent of over 1,600 illegal immigrants who were captured in the first week of December.
According to the posts on X and Facebook, “Douglas Station Field Training Unit tracked 3 migrants west of Douglas, AZ. As agents approached, 1 migrant ran, leaving behind a Guatemalan woman and her 5-year-old child. With the assistance of a USBP #K9, agents were able to apprehend the 17-year-old Mexican national.”
The 17-year-old Mexican national who fled was pictured in the post wearing carpet-like slips over his shoes designed to disguise his tracks, as well as desert camouflage leading to speculation that he may have been guiding the Guatemalan woman and child.
The apprehensions represented the third major interception in a matter of three days. Modlin’s office also posted imagery from the capture of five illegal immigrants from Guatemala and Mexico near SR-90 on December 1.
Another five illegal immigrants were arrested on Dec. 1st after the driver of the vehicle they were being smuggled in failed to yield on SR-85. Modlin’s office noted that “the occupants attempted to abscond into the desert but were quickly apprehended.”
In a post to X on Dec. 9, Border Patrol Chief Jason Owens shared footage of a dramatic helicopter rescue from the Arizona desert explaining, “USBP agents in Tucson Sector, with local sheriff’s air support, rescued an injured migrant in Arizona’s rugged mountains. BORSTAR agents provided critical medical care before airlifting the individual to safety. This highlights the harsh journey migrants face and the heroic efforts of our agents.”
In reviewing the week, as of December 6th, Modlin reported his sector had made 1,600 apprehensions, leading to 171 federal criminal cases. They also seized 19 lbs. of methamphetamine, 9 lbs. of cocaine, 6.7 lbs. of Heroin, and $2,032. They stopped 18 human smuggling events and 7 Narcotics Events. And they made six rescues.
Matthew Holloway is a senior reporter for AZ Free News. Follow him on X for his latest stories, or email tips to Matthew@azfreenews.com.
by Daniel Stefanski | Oct 1, 2024 | News
By Daniel Stefanski |
The nation’s Border Patrol union is throwing the red flag on Vice President Kamala Harris’ trip to the border late last week.
On Friday, Harris visited the border in Douglas, Arizona. After her stop, she posted, “As Attorney General of California, I prosecuted transnational criminal organizations that trafficked guns, drugs, and human beings. I know the importance of safety and security, especially at our border. Today, I visited the U.S.-Mexico border and spoke with Customs and Border Protection officials about our progress to secure our border and disrupt the flow of illegal fentanyl into our nation.”
The National Border Patrol Union (NBPC) took exception with many of Harris’ statements on this trip as well as the motivation for her visit. The NBPC “X” account stated, “Vice president Harris has ignored the border problem she created for over three years. She goes down there for 20 minutes for a photo op and decides to repeat some of the things the NPBC has said before. But again, where has she been the last 3 ½ years?”
Former President Donald J. Trump also weighed in on Harris’ visit, saying on Truth Social, “Comrade Kamala Harris, who allowed almost 14,000 MURDERERS to freely and openly roam our Country, is now making a Speech in Douglas, Arizona, trying to say she did an OK job with the Border. She didn’t! She is the Worst Vice President in History, and the Worst Border Czar in History, and people are dying every day because of her. SHE HAS GOT BLOOD ON HER HANDS!”
Before Harris touched down in Arizona, Art Del Cueto, the Vice President of the NBPC, opined on the Vice President’s upcoming trip to the U.S.-Mexico border. On his Instagram account, Del Cueto shared a picture of the border wall in Douglas, Arizona, not far from where the Vice President and Democrat nominee for President of the United States toured on Friday, saying, “This is the border in southern Arizona. This is where the wall stopped because the current administration did not want it to continue. This is where our tax dollars are sitting on the side because the current administration did not care enough about Americans to secure borders. This is where President Trump built the wall during his administration to protect American lives. This is where President Trump will finish the wall so it can continue to be used as a deterrent along with policies and help protect our country.”
Del Cueto added, “This is also not the area where vice president is going to visit because she would have to face the reality that she is part of the chaos we continue to see and she is also part of the administration that stopped building a deterrent that would help our country.”
Harris’ visit to the border marked the first time she has experienced the Arizona section of the international boundary in person as Vice President. A few years ago, Harris visited the border in the El Paso Sector.
In April 2021, then-Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich sent a letter to Harris, inviting her to the southern border. He told Harris that this tour would “provide firsthand insight into what Arizonans, law enforcement officials, and migrants are experiencing.” According to Brnovich, this invite went unanswered by the newly minted Vice President, who had served with him as a fellow attorney general from the State of California.
A little more than a month after this initial communication, Brnovich wrote to President Biden about Harris ignoring his invitation, requesting “that she be replaced as [his] ‘border czar.’” He said, “We are now nearly 50 days into her appointment, and Vice President Harris has shown little interest in observing what is happening along the border and has failed to articulate any plan to deal with the devastating effects of this crisis. Instead, she has traveled to other states for unrelated and less-pressing matters. Mr. President, this is a slap in the face to Arizonans who helped elect you both to the highest offices in the land.”
Mark Dannels, the Arizona sheriff for the region of the border that Harris traveled to, had also implored Harris to visit his county to see firsthand the problems that her administration’s policies have caused for communities in the state and elsewhere in the country. He told another Arizona media outlet last month that “it’s very important that [Harris] comes here. Because for three-and-a-half-years, we haven’t seen prioritization, acknowledgment or engagement with Vice President Harris or President Biden.”
Dannels then stated, “For her not to come in the next 78 days … sends a very strong message.”
Daniel Stefanski is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
by Terri Jo Neff | Jun 19, 2021 | News
By Terri Jo Neff |
The failure of the Patriot Party of Arizona to properly circulate petitions in its effort to recall House Speaker Rusty Bowers is the latest example of how difficult it can be for the average citizen to comply with confusing laws written by legislators to protect themselves from recalls.
On Thursday, the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office (SOS) announced it would not count any of the estimated 24,500 signatures contained on 2,040 recall petitions submitted by the Patriot Party of Arizona. The reason given by the SOS is that the petitions sheets were not attached to a “time-and-date marked copy” of the recall application.
A recall petition states the reason a recall election is being sought against a current elected official. It also includes room for several registered voters within the jurisdiction of the elected official to affix their name, address, and signature.
The number of signatures needed to get a recall election on the ballot is determined by state statute; for Bowers’ recall organizers it was 22,311. But before any signatures can be gathered someone had to apply for a recall serial number by which all paperwork will be filed and tracked.
It is two other recall statutes which have tripped up at least two other recall efforts in recent years due to the fact the two statutes have to “taken together,” the Arizona Supreme Court ruled in 2019. Such an interpretation requires a “time-and-date marked copy” of the recall application with the official serial number to be “attached” to each petition sheet.
The Patriot Party of Arizona declined to comment on the SOS’s determination about the non-attached applications.
Bowers attracted the wrath of the Republican-spinoff group by not supporting 2020 election fraud claims and not pushing back against Gov. Doug Ducey’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Public support for the recall effort came from well-known pro-Trump names, including attorney Sidney Powell, America Restored executive director Tomi Collins, and My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell.
For his part, Bowers (R-LD25) publicly stated this week he expected to stand later this year for a recall election. “I was gearing up to go through a recall,” he said.
The non-compliance by the Patriot Party of Arizona is somewhat similar to the situation Tanya Duarte found herself in when trying to recall then-Mayor Robert Uribe of Douglas in 2019. Duarte applied for a recall number and made dozens of copies of the time-date copy of the application, which were placed behind each petition on a clipboard.
This made the application readily available for anyone to read, Duarte later testified. The Douglas city clerk initially certified 668 petition signatures, more than enough to force Uribe to stand for election 10 months before the end of his term.
But Uribe’s wife -as a Douglas voter- challenged all of the signatures due to the lack of applications attached to the petitions.
Judge David Thorn of the Cochise County Superior Court heard the case and noted that lawmakers failed to include a description in the recall statutes for how the application copy is to be attached to the petition. He even pulled out an ordinary dictionary to review definitions of the word attached.
In the end Thorn ruled the common language definition requires the application copy to be affixed or adhered to the petition whether “it be tape, staple, glue” or some other manner to ensure the two documents are not easily separated.
Thorn also commented that the Legislature “gets to make laws, to make it more exacting” for average citizens to recall public officials.
The Arizona Supreme Court also tackled the recall process in 2019 after the Urban Phoenix Project political action committee (Committee) ran into the “attached” issue during its attempt to recall then-City Councilman Michael Nowakowski in 2018.
The group submitted petitions containing more than 2,300 signatures from which the city clerk deemed enough were valid to make Nowakowski stand for election again. But a voter of Nowakowski’s district challenged the city clerk’s decision, arguing in part that a copy of the application was not attached to any of the petitions.
A Maricopa County judge ruled the City Clerk should not have counted any of the petitions due to missing copies of the application. The case went to the Arizona Supreme Court where then-Chief Justice Scott Bales authored a unanimous opinion which acknowledged the effort it takes to collect so many signatures.
The opinion also noted the recall statutes can be confusing for most citizens. But the two separate statutes related to circulating petitions have to be read together in order for any signatures to be valid, Bales wrote.
“The time-and-date-marked copy of the application –unlike the petition sheets– both identifies the applicant (including any organization, certain officers, and contact information) and reflects that the application has in fact been filed. Requiring the attachment of a such a copy also helps ensure that signatures are not obtained before the application is filed,” consistent with state law, he wrote.
“Our state constitution guarantees voters the right to recall elected officers for whatever reasons they choose…That right, however, must be exercised pursuant to constitutional and statutory provisions,” Bales added.