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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2015
PARTING SHOT
A weekly snapshot from The Daily Astorian and Chinook Observer photographers
The sun rises over Astoria on an October morning.
Joshua Bessex/The Daily Astorian
ODDITY
Barbed rhetoric, but fence a tall order
Arizona panel directs
cash for border fence
to technology, new gear
By BOB CHRISTIE
Associated Press
PHOENIX — Arizona lawmakers who
hoped to build miles of fencing along the
border with Mexico using millions of dollars
in private donations are instead directing the
money to buy equipment for a border sheriff’s
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the donations needed.
The decision this week by the Legisla-
ture’s border security advisory committee
came without a mention of the original in-
tent of the donations to build a fence along
the border.
Republican backers of the 2011 legislation
hoped for as much as $50 million in private
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ing 15-foot fences at busy border-crossing
points, then erecting other fences along miles
of the state’s nearly 200-mile border that had
no federal fences at the time.
Instead, the state received about $265,000.
Backlash led to recall
The effort began during the height of Arizo-
na’s battle against illegal immigration, before a
backlash that led to the recall of the Republi-
can Senate president that curbed the GOP-led
Legislature’s appetite for measures targeting
immigration.
The meeting began with members of the
committee ripping the federal government for
failing to secure the border and keep drugs
and illegal activity away from Arizona. Pi-
nal County Sheriff Paul Babeu said it’s like
“Groundhog Day” and state Sen. Steve Smith
said “every time we come back here, nothing
changes.” Sheriff’s, state department heads
and lawmakers serve on the panel, with the
lawmakers not voting.
But the Border Patrol’s Tucson sector,
which covers most of the state, remains the
agency’s most heavily staffed post in the na-
tion with more than 4,000 agents in 2014 and
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the immigration debate was raging in the Ari-
zona capitol.
22-year low in captures
Immigration from Mexico has also slowed
considerably this decade, and the number of
immigrants apprehended in the Border Patrol’s
Tucson sector in 2014 dipped to a 22-year
low. Nearby Yuma plummeted to 1960s lows
starting in 2011 when the fence fundraising
effort was launched. The federal government
also beefed up fencing last decade to the point
that 650 miles of the 1,900-mile U.S.-Mexico
border now have fence, In Arizona, the U.S.
Border Patrol says 318 of the 389 miles of the
border are protected by pedestrian fencing or
vehicle barriers.
The Legislature in August asked sheriffs in
Cochise, Pima, Yuma and Santa Cruz counties
to present plans for the cash related to border
security.
Only Cochise County applied, asking for
$220,000 to buy thermal imaging equipment,
Ross D. Franklin/AP Photo
This barbed wire fence is the only thing that separates the United States, on the left, from Mexico at the border near Nogales, Ariz.
Arizona lawmakers who hoped to build miles of fencing along the border with Mexico using private money are pulling the plug on the
project after nearly five years, as the 2011 legislation hoped to collect as much as $50 million in donations to build the fence, but only
about $265,000 was collected.
‘My notion was and always is, let’s start
a pilot project and hopefully shame the
federal government into doing their job.’
state Sen. Steve Smith
a Republican from the community of Maricopa, about 40 miles south of Phoenix
binoculars, GPS equipment and other gear for
border security and ranch patrol teams.
In a letter, Sheriff Mark Dannels praised the
efforts of the U.S. Border Patrol to add tech-
nology and fencing to the border but said when
migrants or smugglers do make it across, law
enforcement agencies need to be equipped to
respond.
“We have issues in our county — we have
serious issues in our county,” Dannels said.
“They get through our county they’re in your
neighborhood.”
One-time money
Santa Cruz County Sheriff Tony Estrada
said he appreciated the offer but didn’t partic-
ipate because it’s one-time money and there’s
not enough cash to have an effect.
“I know it’s a lot of money,” Estrada said.
“But when you’re talking about a fence, either
virtual or wherever, and then obviously if it’s
a virtual fence we’d have to maintain whatever
it is.”
Sheriffs in Pima and Yuma County also
didn’t make proposals. Yuma County sheriff’s
spokesman Alfonso Zavala saying in an email
that “the money was initially intended for a
privately funded wall, (and) Yuma County al-
ready has that infrastructure and did not seek
additional funds.”
Smith, the lawmaker who championed the
2011 bill, said the donations can be used only
for border security measures either a fence or a
`virtual’ fence and that the equipment Dannels
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“You have cameras, you have a whole mul-
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about,” Smith said. “Again, what is a virtual
fence? Virtual is technology. It’s not `a’ thing.
It’s not one piece of technology.”
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proached $2.8 million.
The state launched a website in 2011 to
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championed the effort. In December of that
year, the state had more than $250,000, but do-
nations dried up.
Smith, a Republican from the community
of Maricopa, about 40 miles south of Phoenix,
said he’s not discouraged by the lack of fund-
raising.
“My notion was and always is, let’s start a
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