Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu -- more than 90 miles north of the border -- explained the consequences: "Our deputies are outnumbered and outgunned. We're up against drug runners carrying AK-47s," the Soviet-era weapon used by al-Qaida terrorists and Taliban insurgents fighting U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
After one of his deputies was wounded by an AK-47-toting border crosser, Babeu requested funding to purchase AR-15 rifles for his department. The county turned him down for lack of funds. He told us, "My deputies shouldn't have to buy their own weapons to protect themselves and the public." A group of concerned citizens is soliciting donations to buy the rifles for them.
Larry Dever is the sheriff of Cochise County. At 6,000 square miles, it is larger than Connecticut. His jurisdiction is home to Tombstone, scene of the legendary 1881 shootout at the OK Corral. It also shares an 82-mile border with Mexico. Last year, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, more than 550,000 people were arrested trying to enter the U.S. illegally. Nearly half of them crossed the border in the "Tucson sector," which includes Cochise County. Yet Dever has fewer than 90 sworn deputies.
After Cochise County rancher Bob Krantz was murdered by an illegal border jumper March 27, the Obama administration promised to deploy 1,200 National Guard troops to "assist the U.S Border Patrol on the Mexican border." Arizona will get fewer than 550 of them -- when they finally arrive. Not one cent of the $600 million appropriated by Congress this month for "border security" will go to any of the border states or sheriffs. The money all goes to federal agencies.
Instead of new weapons, reinforcements and help protecting our southern border, Arizona's sheriffs and Gov. Jan Brewer received something entirely different from the Obama administration: a federal lawsuit. Last month, a federal judge in Phoenix decided Arizona could not enforce certain provisions of a state law -- SB 1070 -- which allowed Arizona law enforcement officers to ascertain the citizenship of individuals stopped for legal infractions. Arizona filed its appeal in the case this week, while we were on the border.
That's not all that happened this week in what one of our hosts called "the northern edge of the new war zone." A mass grave containing the remains of more than 70 murdered men, women and children from Central America and South America was found in northeastern Mexico, less than 90 miles from the U.S. border. That brings the civilian murder toll in Mexico to more than 28,000 since 2006 -- higher than Afghanistan. And last night, two were killed and three were wounded in a drug-related gunfight here in Tucson.
Meanwhile the president -- who insinuated himself in a local police matter in Cambridge, Mass., and a zoning matter for a mosque in Manhattan -- has been too busy to send condolences to Sue Krantz, the widow of an American murdered by a foreign criminal on U.S. soil.