Four years after losing in Arizona, President-elect Donald Trump won back the state this year, according to a race call by the Associated Press over the weekend. But not all those who elected Trump also voted for a GOP-backed immigration question on the ballot.
Proposition 314 allows local police to carry out immigration-related arrests and also introduces harsher penalties for fentanyl distribution that ends in death.
Jaime Chamberlain is a businessman in Nogales, Arizona - along the border with Mexico. He says he voted for Trump but not Prop. 314.
“I think it puts undue burden on local law enforcement, it doesn’t have funding for those arrests if they’re made, and it doesn’t give a mechanism of how they could apply back for any of the costs that are incurred to do that,” he said. “This time, there were a lot of people in the business community that were mindful of what had happened previously with SB 1070, so they didn’t want that to happen again.”
SB 1070 was a 2010 law that also gave local police immigration arrest authority and was mostly struck down by the Supreme Court. Chamberlain says cross-border relations took a major hit because of the law, and he believes the fact that Prop. 314 passed despite that history is a sign of how frustrated Arizonans are with border issues. He says he also would have voted for the measure, if it had only been about fentanyl.
“I really believe that we should have much stiffer penalties on distribution that ends in death,” he said. “That is something I wholeheartedly would have voted yes for.”
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A lawsuit filed by aid groups argues the Trump administration’s freezing of federal funds for refugees is illegal. -
State lawmakers are proposing two diametrically opposed requirements on what state and local officials should be doing about illegal immigration. -
As the new Trump administration has ramped up the president’s promised mass deportations, protesters have taken to the streets here and across the country to voice their opposition. -
Nogales, Sonora, mayor Juan Francisco Gim Nogales says the Mexican National Guard is arriving in the city as part of the agreement made by Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum for the Trump Administration to delay 25% tariffs on Mexican imports. -
A state Senate's Military Affairs and Border Security Committee approved a bill on Monday to rent the Marana prison complex to the federal government to house people held for immigration violations.
