By Jonathan Clark

The mayors of Arizona’s three principal border cities are asking Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu to tone down his hard-line border security rhetoric, accusing him of propagating “misinformation” and “consistent inaccuracies” that unfairly hurt their communities.

“We would appreciate it if you would not cultivate a culture of fear in our state and to start being accurate about border security,” states a letter to Babeu, dated Feb. 9 and signed by mayors Arturo Garino of Nogales, Michael Gomez of Douglas and Juan Escamilla of San Luis.

“While your misstatements about efforts to keep communities along the U.S.-Mexico border may keep national media coming to Arizona, at the same time your consistent inaccuracies hurt cities and towns like ours by causing those who live and travel to the border to fear for their safety when in our communities.”

Garino, who campaigned on a promise to improve Nogales’ image, said the letter was his idea. And he said he had little trouble convincing the other mayors to sign on.

“He’s been saying that Nogales and this area and region is a ‘war zone.’ He needs to stop doing that,” Garino said. “The perception of a war zone is not very good for our economy, as well as for the economies of San Luis and Douglas.”

The war zone analogy is not only harmful, it’s inaccurate, Garino said. The mayors’ letter points to FBI data showing that violent crime is down or remains flat in the border region, and it notes a dramatic increase in the size of the Border Patrol, an increase in the amount of illegal drugs being seized at the border, and a decrease in the number of illegal immigrant arrested.

“We’re putting a lot of time and effort into keeping our community safe, so we don’t need somebody 100 miles from here saying that it’s out of control,” Garino said. “I’m sorry, it’s not out of control.”

Gomez said his city’s government was also tired of having Douglas’ image tarnished by the specter of border violence.

“I conferred with my council and they didn’t like the bad publicity we were getting from the sheriff and we decided to say, ‘No, it’s safe to come to Douglas,’” he said. “We just wanted to reiterate to him that Douglas and the border towns are safe to come and visit.”

In an e-mailed statement, Babeu said he stands by his assertion that the border security problem has worsened, and pointed to a spillover effect in his county, which lies directly north of Santa Cruz and Pima counties. He said his office had doubled its confiscation of drugs and calls to the Border Patrol during the past year, and said Pinal deputies had been engaged in 340 vehicle pursuits this year, up from the 142 recorded two years ago.

“We have a serious public safety threat in my county, due to an unsecured border with Mexico,” he said.

As for the mayors’ letter, he said, they should have expressed their concerns directly to him before allowing it to reach the media.

“They have done the very thing they accuse me of doing,” he said.

“I do not represent these mayors or their citizens,” Babeu wrote, “yet I do represent the nearly 400,000 citizens of my county and the overwhelming majority of Arizonans, who laugh at (Homeland Security Secretary Janet) Napolitano’s suggestion that our border is more secure than ever.”

The letter to Babeu strikes a similar tone to one sent earlier this month by the recently created U.S.-Mexico Border Mayors Association to Fox News host Mike Huckabee and NBC News military analyst Kenneth Allard after the pair published an editorial in the New York Post saying the government had “failed miserably” to secure the border.

That letter, signed by Garino and mayors from cities stretching from San Diego to Brownsville, Texas, also complained that Huckabee and Allard were playing up the security threat in the face of facts, and hurting their communities in the process.

Often in spotlight

Babeu has been sounding the alarm on border security and criticizing federal border policy since he was elected sheriff in 2008. His unwavering stance and penchant for bold statements (He predicted last month that an armed conflict with drug cartels was coming to Pinal County “in the next 30 to 60 days”) has earned him a loyal following among security-minded citizens and politicians, and made him a darling of the conservative media.

Garino complained that Babeu’s regular appearances on national news outlets like Fox News make his message especially damaging.

“The main news media picks up on him all the time,” he said.

Babeu’s eagerness to spread his message has also led to accusations of political grandstanding. And while he regularly accuses the Obama Administration of distorting the level of progress along the border, he himself has been prone to exaggeration. In comments to a Phoenix TV station last week, he said drug cartels had “nearly toppled the Mexican government.”

Three of the four sheriffs in Arizona’s border counties — Antonio Estrada in Santa Cruz, Clarence Dupnik in Pima and Ralph Ogden in Yuma — have adopted more measured stances on border security. But the state’s fourth border sheriff, Larry Dever of Cochise County, often appears with Babeu and offers similarly dire assessments of the situation at the border. Even so, Gomez, whose city of Douglas lies in Cochise County, declined to extend the border mayors’ criticism to Dever.

“I have never heard him say it is unsafe to travel to Douglas,” Gomez said.

Article source: http://www.gvnews.com/news/article_89a79034-394e-11e0-a708-001cc4c03286.html

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