America should deny demands from Mexico for billions of dollars in order to stop the flow of illegal immigration, according to U.S. Senate candidate Mark Lamb on Tuesday.
Lamb, a Republican and the current sheriff of Pinal County, Arizona, criticized Mexican President Lopez Obrador’s list of demands which the United States would need to meet in exchange for Mexico to help slow illegal immigration across the southern border.
“I consider the demands made by Mexico as DOA – dead on arrival,” Lamb said. “The last time I looked, the Mexican President doesn’t get to set U.S. domestic and foreign policy. I call upon the entire Arizona Congressional delegation to unite and publicly reject these conditions imposed by Mexico.”
Obrador demanded the U.S. give $20 billion to Latin American and Caribbean countries; grant work visas to 10 million Hispanics who have worked in the U.S. for at least 10 years; and end sanctions against Venezuela and halt the blockade of Cuba.
Mexico is responsible for slowing illegal immigration into America, according to Lamb.
“As our southern neighbor, the responsibility is on them to do everything they can to work with us – without preconditions – to stop the hundreds of thousands of illegals crossing our mutual border,” Lamb said. “We shouldn’t take kindly to having a gun put to our head just to have Mexico do what’s right.”
Lamb said the Mexican president’s demands are an example of President Joe Biden’s “lost control of the border.”
Border Patrol encountered 2.5 million migrants on the U.S.-Mexico border in fiscal year 2023, topping the previous year’s record, according to the Migration Policy Institute.
“It’s bad enough that Biden doesn’t have a plan to stop the hundreds of thousands of illegals crossing the border and the fentanyl that comes with them, now Biden is allowing our nation to be held hostage by the President of Mexico,” Lamb continued.
Lamb is running for Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s seat. He has said that if elected, he will work to secure the border with Trump-era policies.
“We’ve got to shut the border down, secure the border and we’ve got to restore the ‘Remain in Mexico’ program,” Lamb told Fox News.
“We’re gonna have a mass deportation situation on our hands and so we’ve got to get back to securing the border – first and foremost – which would stop the fentanyl,” Lamb continued to Fox News. “It would weaken the cartels and allow border patrol to get back to doing their jobs because right now they are completely handcuffed.”
Elizabeth Troutman is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send her news tips using this link.
The Pinal County Sheriff’s Office won a Rocky Mountain Emmy for their video of Sheriff Mark Lamb doing “God’s work”: nabbing drivers holding up the left lane made for passing.
The four-minute video, “Stop Camping in the Left Lane,” features Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb as he catches drivers remaining, or “camping,” in the far-left lane reserved for passing and impeding the flow of traffic. One of Lamb’s earliest featured targets was holding up his car and several others while also driving under the speed limit.
“[A]s you know, one of my pet peeves is people camping in the left lane,” said Lamb. “So I’m out here doing God’s work today: we’re going to stop people from driving in the left lane and being inconsiderate of others.”
It appears that no tickets were issued, and therefore no wallets were harmed, in the making of the video.
Lamb was filmed monitoring traffic on the I-10 highway. The sheriff narrates from his dash cam his monitoring one Texas driver camping in the left lane, resulting in three to four other cars to pass on the right.
Lamb pulled that Texas driver over. The Texas driver responded that he “was going the speed limit,” to which Lamb informed him that the left lane is reserved for passing, not strict speed limit adherence.
The Texas driver then claimed he attempted to switch over to a right lane, but was unable to do so, to which Lamb replied that he’d been following him for “a while.”
The exchange hit a lighter note as Lamb asked the driver whether he had any weapons in the car. When the Texan answered in the negative, Lamb advised him that he should for personal safety reasons.
“Do you have any weapons in the car? No? Well, you should, it’s dangerous out there!” said Lamb.
Lamb ultimately let the Texan off with a warning and a valuable lesson about the power of the passing lane.
“It’s not about going the speed limit, it is about: the left lane is for passing,” said Lamb.
The sheriff also had a message for those who refuse to believe in the purpose of the left lane as exclusively for passing.
“And for all those know-it-alls that plan on sending me an email and telling me how wrong I am, let me save you the time: don’t bother, ‘cause I’m not going to read it anyway,” said Lamb.
Another driver took more effort on Lamb’s part to pull over. The driver of a truck hauling construction equipment on a trailer failed to notice the backup of cars behind him and Lamb signaling for him to pull over for “about four or five miles.” Lamb informed the driver that he needed to be over in one of the right lanes, to which the man insisted he hadn’t noticed the sheriff or the backup.
Again, Lamb didn’t commit to a ticket: he opted to offer a warning to the man and sent him on his way.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
If someone in the private sector illegally took money that didn’t belong to them and then refused to return it, what do you think would happen? They could be heavily punished with fines. They could face sanctions. They could even end up in jail, depending on the offense.
But for about a year and a half, Pinal County has been allowed to drag its feet in refunding $80 million that it illegally collected from taxpayers. It’s just another example of government officials who think they are above the law.
This all started back in 2016 when Pinal County officials proposed a $640 million transit tax hike to voters in order to fund a wide array of transportation projects throughout the region. But after unveiling the plan, the county faced strong opposition from retailers, home builders, auto dealers, and multiple taxpayer watchdog groups.
This should’ve been enough for county officials to recognize that the community didn’t support their proposal. But they were too committed to their scheme. So, what did they do?
The Goldwater Institute asked a judge to make Pinal County return the $80 million in taxes it illegally collected. It’s been nearly a year and a half since the county learned it had to return the funds to the taxpayers.
The organization filed a request for a permanent injunction with the Arizona Superior Court in the Arizona Tax Court on Monday.
The $80 million came from a sales tax disproportionately applied to purchases under $10,000. Arizona law doesn’t allow that sort of tax arrangement, which the Arizona Supreme Court affirmed in a ruling issued last year, in Vangilder v. Arizona Department of Revenue.
The Arizona Department of Revenue (ADOR) promised to return the $80 million quickly. The Pinal Regional Transportation Authority (PRTA) has held the funding in an interest-bearing escrow account, with ADOR playing an administrative role in the distribution of the funds.
ADOR gave notice to the superior court last September that it was “setting up a system to process refund claims.”
Yet at the close of last month, ADOR announced that it wouldn’t process refunds at all until PRTA decides the final disposition of the funds. ADOR also indicated that it was the legislature’s duty to figure out how to return the funding, and that no laws were passed during this last session to that effect.
“For these reasons, until the PRTA makes a decision regarding the final disposition of these funds, the Department cannot process any refund claims for the invalidated Pinal County transportation tax,” said ADOR.
The Goldwater Institute declared in their request for a permanent injunction that this decision was unlawful, a “knowing defiance of the law” that constituted an illegal withholding of taxpayer funds violative of court rulings.
“Neither PRTA nor ADOR has any lawful authority to refuse to return illegally obtained and illegally withheld tax money,” stated the organization.
The organization also noted that both the PRTA and ADOR repeatedly neglected to set up a system for efficient returns of the funds should they fail to defend the tax in court.
In a press release, Goldwater Institute Vice President of Legal Affairs Timothy Sandefur stated that the taxpayers were long overdue for their refund.
“The department blames the county, but whoever is at fault, the bottom line is clear: taxpayers are legally entitled to refunds — and the state and county government are refusing to give the money back,” said Sandefur. “[This is] money they have no right to keep, because they had no right to take it.”
The PRTA and ADOR ignored their warnings to postpone collection of the tax in order to avoid administrative difficulties in returning the funds. PRTA also assured the court and the Goldwater Institute in 2018 that it would have a returns system in place.
“[A]t the end of the day if we are not successful, but we have but all this money in escrow by agreement, there will be — the system will play out as it should, through refund claims and the like, and no one will essentially be harmed in that anyone who overpaid will be entitled to a refund, plus interest,” stated PRTA’s counsel.
ADOR told AZ Free News in an emailed statement in February that taxpayers who paid the invalidated tax are able to file claims for what they paid with interest until April 9, 2026.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
Clean and accurate voter rolls are a cornerstone to safe and secure elections. And they are required by both state and federal law. Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) specifically obligates states to conduct a general program that makes a reasonable effort to remove the names of ineligible voters from the official lists of eligible voters due to death or change of residence. The U.S. Supreme Court even backed this up in its 2018 decision in the case Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Institute.
But Arizona’s current Secretary of State Adrian Fontes and its former Secretary of State (now Governor) Katie Hobbs have failed to perform the necessary voter list maintenance. And right now, 14 Arizona counties are in violation of Section 8 of the NVRA…
