The Daily Signal - Arizona GOP Leader Explains Why Area Voted Against Sanctuary Status

Episode Date: February 26, 2020

 When talking about the immigration issue, more focus is often given to those coming into the country illegally, while citizens who live in border towns and cities are more often left out of the conversation. On today’s podcast, I speak with Chris King, the first vice chairman of the Pima County Republican party, who talks about what it’s like to live in a border area, and why Pima County voted not to become a sanctuary city.    We also cover these stories: In the wake of President Donald Trump’s visit to India this week, Trump announced that the United States would sell the host country $3 billion worth of military equipment. The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases says that the spread of the coronavirus in the U.S. is imminent.  President Trump called for Supreme Court Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg to recuse themselves from cases related to him in remarks on his trip to India. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Wednesday, February 26. I'm Jared Stedman. And I'm Rachel Del Judas. When talking about the immigration issue, more focus is often given to those coming into the country illegally, while citizens who live in border towns and cities who are in the middle of such situations are often left out of the conversation. On today's Daily Signal podcast, I speak with Chris King, the vice chairman of the Pima County Republican Party, who talks about what it's like to live in a border area. and why Pima County voted not to become a sanctuary city. And if you're enjoying this podcast, please be sure to leave a review or five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage others to subscribe. Now on to our top news. In the wake of President Donald Trump's visit to India this week, Trump announced that the United

States would sell the host country $3 billion worth of military equipment. According to Reuters, India will buy 24 Seahawk helicopters from Lockheed Martin, equipped with Hellfire missiles worth $2.6 billion, among other equipment. Trump said he was optimistic that a larger trade deal could be hashed out. Trump said in remarks alongside Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, our teams have made tremendous progress on a comprehensive trade agreement, and I'm optimistic we can reach a deal that will be of great importance to both countries. Nancy Messner, the CDC Director for the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said,

as more and more countries experience community spread, successful containment at our borders becomes harder and harder. It's not a question of if this will happen, but when this will happen and how many people in the country will have severe illnesses, Messner said. Disruption to everyday life might be severe. And on Monday, the White House announced that President Trump is asking Congress for $2.5 billion to try to stop the spread of the coronavirus, which includes over $1 billion for vaccine. for coronavirus, which has infected 29 countries and territories outside of China, with flare-ups

in Iran, South Korea, and Italy. President Trump called for Supreme Court justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg to recuse themselves from cases related to him in remarks on his trip in India. Sotomayor recently issued a dissent, complaining that the Supreme Court was allowing too many controversial policies to go into effect on the basis of an emergency. She said that, most troublingly, the court's recent behavior has benefited one litigant over all others. Trump said, I just don't know how they can't recuse themselves for anything having to do with Trump or Trump-related. He also said that Justice Ginsburg went wild during the 2016 presidential campaign. Following the election, Ginsburg said that she regretted making ill-advised statements.

The Supreme Court ruled 5'4 in favor of the Border Patrol in a decision on Tuesday, ruling in favor of a Border Patrol agent who faced a lawsuit from parents of a Mexican child he killed in a June 2010 cross-border shooting. Fox News reported. The parents of the 15-year-old boy that died said that their child and his friends were playing a game where they would run back and forth across the border, while the officer who killed the 15-year-old said that he was assaulted by rock throwing from the boy and his peers. Per Fox News, the ruling maintained that regardless of the circumstances, precedent regarding lawsuits against officers, known as Bivens claims, do not apply to cross-border shootings. On Tuesday, Representative Roe Kana, a Democrat from California, proposed legislation to add a third gender to passport applications. The legislation requests that the State Department add a gender-neutral designation for passports or a consular report of birth abroad.

respecting every American's gender must extend to travel abroad, Kana said in a statement, the freedom to move and express yourself no matter what should be guaranteed in this country. According to the Hill, 15 states in the District of Columbia have begun offering non-binary gender designations on identification cards. The Senate voted on two pro-life bills on Tuesday, one that would require babies that survive abortion to receive medical treatment, and another bill that would prohibit late-term abortions. Republicans hold 53 seats in the Senate and therefore will not reach the 60 vote majority. The 60 vote super majority needed to advance the bills. Democrats hold 45 seats with two seats belonging to independence.

Next up, my interview with Chris King, the first vice chairman of the Pima County Republican Party. It's because of support from listeners like you that we can continue to produce podcasts like Heritage Explains and SCOTUS 101. And you can help us keep it going by visiting Doug. www.heritage.org slash podcast today to make your tax deductible gift. We are joined today on the Daily Signal podcast by Chris King. He's the first vice chairman of the Pima County Republican Party. Chris, thank you so much for being with us today. Thank you.

So just to get started, you've lived in Arizona. You see the border crisis up close and personal. Can you tell us a little bit about what you see on a day-to-day basis? I guess the thing we see on the day-to-day basis is the crime rates are staying constant. We see illegals coming through daily. We see our city council protecting them over our, you know, citizens. We see our county board of supervisors prioritizing them over our own American citizens. And we see that regardless of how many people step up and say we've had enough, the crime will still continue. The border is not secure regardless of whatever

the mainstream media tells you. The people who live here, some of them are moving away. They're tired of dealing with a government, and that's all levels, that doesn't want to actually address the issue. So I know in November, this area, they voted against having sanctuary cities implemented? What was that push like to have sanctuacities here? And then were you expecting that measure to be voted down? What was that experience like? Pima County is a rather large county. It's 9,200 square miles. And in the, with that proposition, it was voted down overwhelmingly. The majority of the people that supported it were within a four mile segment of the community. And it was right around the areas of our internal transit system, which is right in the university.

Outside of that area, it was voted down overwhelmingly. So the sanctuary city policies, they don't work. They don't work anywhere you can see in California, which has recently declared itself a sanctuary state. They say that sanctuary cities are safer because crime rate goes down. Well, that's been proven to be categorically false. We just look at the different issues that come up around it, and we have to truly prioritize what is the issue. What is government's purpose? So I was recently announced.

I think it was in January, so a little while ago, that the 100 miles of border wall, that that was a landmark that had finally reached 100 miles, because you live in the area here in Arizona, have you seen a difference with that mile being reached? or is it more of a day-to-day situation in the here that's going on where you're just working with the illegal immigration problem? You haven't seen much of a difference. So what does that look like? Where we live in the Tucson area, it's not really so much of an issue where other people live in the city and the county. It is an issue. Illegals rarely migrate through areas where they're more likely to be reported, caught, and basically sent back. However, we're one of the largest sectors in the nation. And we have a very large processing facility here in Tucson. And if you go to the areas in Pima County that are very open, you will see a lot more process, a lot more migration of the illegals through the desert.

You'll see the crime that transpires because of it as well. The Arizona Times, they recently reported that lawmakers are filing a ballot resolution that would ask Arizona voters to decide whether the Arizona Constitution should bar local areas, local jurisdictions, from limiting their compliance with federal immigration. So what is your perspective on that? So the way I'm looking at this is we have our federal immigration partners with Department of Homeland Security, with Immigration Customs Enforcement, Homeland Security Investigations. We have all of these federal immigration partners. We also have our local law enforcement and our county sheriff. And the way, if they can work together to solve an issue without violating the rights of citizens, it's wholly acceptable. But to say that we're not going to, the counties are going to turn down, or city is going to turn down federal funds because they don't like the president.

They don't like such and such. That's kind of hypocritical that they take funds for other areas in law enforcement just because they don't like this one segment. So you'll take it for this pot of money, but you won't take it for this pot of money. It doesn't make any sense. The acting Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark Morgan, he recently announced that border crossings are down for the first time in quite a while. I think he said only around 36,67 illegal immigrants were stopped at the border and only about 29,000 were. arrested. And this number, I think, has been the lowest it's been since February 2018. What is your perspective on this? Have you seen a difference as well? Haven't really seen a difference up here,

but we don't necessarily live in that area where they're going to transit through. I guess if their number of arrests and the number of detentions and captures are down, I guess that means the policies that are being put in place are actually working. Some have said in different Border legislation and illegal immigration legislation that Mexico has been helpful in sometimes sending illegals back. Have you seen that happening in this area where Mexican nationals will try to come over and then the Mexican government sometimes will apprehend them and send them back? Several times our local news actually reports on waves of illegals or other nationals coming, trying to attempt this area. We recently had an alert put out that there were some Middle Eastern

nationals coming through with a potential explosive device. And it was put out, you know, through the media, was put out through various, I guess, venues that this was a potential threat. And nothing from the public has been, you know, seen transpired. So from what we're seeing with the, you know, the Mexican consulate and everything else. And the media reporting is they are stopping those who are trying to come here illegally. and turning them away. Speaking of the media, what is your perspective on how the media reports on this issue?

And also your perspective on your local media here and the national media. It's a very interesting question. When I was actually finishing grad school, one of the courses I took was actually a media in international affairs. And it was interesting to see the perspective of the way media actually reports things. if people step back and they step away from the media that they're used to, right, they step back from watching the same shows and everything else and they listen to more independent media and they start researching themselves. They start looking at what the facts say.

It's really not hard to find. Once you get away from, you know, the first five or six pages of a Google search engine or you go past what the supported or sponsored information, is, you start peeling back that onion and you'll see that the media is not always friendly to anybody. When you start looking at the facts, you'll find that the media skews things to benefit themselves and to support candidates they believe are what they want in office. We see it here at the local level. We see it at the state level and at the national level. So the media is rarely trustworthy and almost all media spins to benefit themselves.

Independent media is by far the best way to actually obtain information. We were talking a little bit before we got started about some things you've witnessed here in this area when it comes to illegal immigration. Are there any instances or stories that you have that come to mind that really illustrate what's going on here well? I don't know if they've happened to you or maybe stories you've read in the news, but are there one or two instances where you can pull out or stories that you remember that come to mind that make you think, yeah, this is a concrete example of what's happening here in this area or in my state. So the interesting thing that I've seen regarding illegal immigration and border security doesn't necessarily come from the media. If you want to see the facts on border security, take a trip to Arizona, take a trip to the desert, take a trip to the border, and get outside of that five-mile stretch or 10-mile stretch around a port of entry. Once you get outside of those areas, you see what a border fence really looks like. It's not the media fence that is purported on the news.

The real border fence is sometimes a railroad tie that's elevated two feet off the ground. Sometimes it's a cattle fence. Sometimes it's barbed wire. And those are what the real stories are. When my wife's family came down from Pennsylvania last year, we took him to the media fence. Then this is what we see on the news. Then we took him outside of town. And they're like, wait a minute, that's not exactly what we see on the news.

How come this isn't reported? And the reason it's not reported is that don't want to fix the issue. What is the drug problem like here? And is there a drug problem with illegals trafficking drugs over? I know when I was here last year, the Border Patrol is explaining to us that a lot of times drug lords will use immigrants that they bring over illegals. And then while the Border Patrol is distracted trying to handle these illegals that are trickling over the fence, they'll have runners come across and run drugs over. So what is that situation like with illegal drugs? brought over here in Arizona.

The interesting thing about the drug problem here in Arizona is it's not just illegal aliens. It's American citizens as well. They will drive their cars over and the cartels will push the drugs in their cars and they'll drive them back. We have American citizens who are arrested here almost daily transporting narcotics across the border. It's not just marijuana anymore. it's methamphetamines, it's fentanyl, it's heroin, other opiates. They're all coming across the border. The cartels own our border, and they come up through the reservations, and they come up through

the uninhabited parts of the desert. In closing, is there any one thing you want to leave with listeners about the border crisis and illegal immigration and why it's so important for people to be educated and talking about this issue? Immigration that's brought up. here by those who would rather come in and not do things the legal way is something that the everyday American citizen needs to take a look at. Watching people and talking to friends and family that live outside of the border community, that 100 mile stretch that hits the international

border, and that's not just the Mexican border, that's the Canadian border as well. When people can't see and they can't rationalize and they can't understand what's going on here, all we really think that people need to do is ask. I have taken several trips down to the border with friends of mine to show them that this is what reality is. Out on the Barry Goldwater gunnery range that's owned by the Department of Defense, illegal aliens transit that daily. Okay. And that's a federal installation. State lands, federal lands, it doesn't matter. They will find their way here. We have an immigration system for a reason. And if we want to actually address the issue, we have to take away the incentives for illegals to come here, right? Whether that's to do American citizens

harm, whether that's to abscond with taxpayer dollars through a variety of programs, or whether that's to just, you know, exist here and send money back to their families. We understand it's an issue. We but it's not an issue that is as simple as building a border wall. That's a great catchphrase. But as I explained to another reporter, border security is like a golf ball. You have one shell on the outside, but there's so many ways, so many things that are intertwined on the inside. So that outer shell will be border security, but you have to look at how things are intertwined

inside. Chris, thank you so much for joining us on the Daily Signal podcast. Thank you. If you're tired of high taxes, fewer health care choices, and bigger and bigger government, it's time to partner with the most impactful conservative organization in America. We're the Heritage Foundation, and we're committed to solving the issues America faces. Together, we'll fight back against the rising tide of homegrown socialism, and we'll fight for conservative solutions that are making families more free and more prosperous.

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