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Arizona border sheriff opposes Republican border security ballot measure Prop. 314

Santa Cruz County Sheriff David Hathaway
Alisa Reznick/KJZZ
Santa Cruz County Sheriff David Hathaway.

An Arizona border sheriff is calling on voters to oppose a broad border security measure referred to the ballot by Republican lawmakers.

If approved, Proposition 314 would give local law enforcement the power to arrest anyone who crosses the state’s border with Mexico outside of a legal port of entry. It also includes new penalties for fentanyl dealing or using fake documents to get a job or obtain public benefits.

Santa Cruz County Sheriff David Hathaway says sheriff’s departments aren’t equipped to enforce immigration law, and that Prop. 314 includes no funding mechanism to cover expenses related to those new duties, which include providing jail space for anyone arrested under the proposed law.

“We would be taking in prisoners with no additional funding to prosecute those prisoners,” Hathaway said. “The prosecutor's office, the county attorney, the state prosecutors, would also be obligated to prosecute these cases with no additional funding other support staff, like the probation officers, the parole officers.”

Hathaway, a Democrat, also said immigration responsibilities would distract local law enforcement from their other duties.

“Two priorities, violent crime like assault, homicide; property crime like fraud, burglary, theft. Those are our priorities,” Hathaway said. “If you try to make us into immigration officers, it takes us off track of what we're supposed to be doing.”

Hathaway said fellow Democratic border Sheriff Chris Nanos from Pima County also opposes the measure.

When Republican legislators first rolled out the measure earlier this year, they also touted support from the law enforcement community, including Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell and Yavapai County Sheriff David Rhodes, president of the Arizona Sheriffs Association.

They said the measure is needed to combat human trafficking and fentanyl smuggling.

“I know it's going to be perceived as controversial, but here's what I would say: come up with a solution then,” Mitchell said in May. “Don't just criticize; come up with a solution, because our people in Arizona are dying.”

Prop. 314’s supporters argue even regions that don’t share a border with Mexico – like Mitchell’s Maricopa County and Rhodes’ Yavapai County – are impacted by what happens at the border.

Earlier this year, the Biden administration added Yavapai County to a federal program designed to provide assistance to “high intensity drug trafficking areas.”

According to the Cato Institute, most fentanyl coming into the United States is trafficked through legal ports of entry by U.S. citizens.

Wayne Schutsky is a broadcast field correspondent covering Arizona politics on KJZZ. He has over a decade of experience as a journalist reporting on local communities in Arizona and the state Capitol.
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