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Republicans are gathered in Milwaukee this week for their national convention, and some politicians are heavily focused on immigration and the border.
Speeches from several politicians tied migration along at the U.S.-Mexico border to everything from fentanyl overdoses to crime.
U.S. Senate hopeful Kari Lake said policies supported by President Joe Biden and Congressman Ruben Gallego had put control of Arizona into the hands of drug cartels.
“Because of them, criminals and deadly drugs are pouring in and our children are dying. Our children are getting their hands on these drugs and dying,” Lake said.
Data from the Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection consistently shows the majority of drug smuggling at the border happens at ports of entry, often by U.S. citizens.
Dr. Nancy Foner, a sociology professor at City University of New York’s Hunter College, says linking crime rates to immigrants is an old, but persistent, myth.
“The foreign-born in fact are much less likely than the native-born to commit violent crimes, and in fact, cities and neighborhoods with greater concentrations of immigrants have much lower crime and violence than comparable non-immigrant neighborhoods,” she said in a webinar for journalists this week.
A Northwestern University study examining more than a century of data found that over the past six decades, immigrants are 60% less likely to be incarcerated than their U.S.-born counterparts.
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Thousands of refugees in the U.S. lost health coverage on Oct. 1 as new Medicaid eligibility rules took effect. In Arizona, unlike in most states, even children and pregnant women are being dropped. -
On Monday, dozens of agents swarmed a stretch of private land where the activists had been camped in and around a centuries-old cottonwood tree. Contractors tore down the tree and agents made multiple arrests. -
New research shows the ancient site is much older than previously thought. In fact, it’s now confirmed to be the oldest known scientifically dated geoglyph in the Americas, 2,000 years older than the first Pyramids built in Egypt. -
Protesters have been camped out in a plot of private ranch land in Lochiel for over two months now, trying to block wall construction as it neared a towering cottonwood tree that was the last of a grove slated for destruction to make way for two, parallel steel bollard walls. -
Ahmed Soliman has no ties to Equatorial Guinea. The 30-year-old man was born in Egypt and brought to the United States. when he was just 4 years old. He grew up in Phoenix. Now he’s believed to be in a hospital in the African nation.
