The election of President Trump and a Republican Congress means Arizona won’t be needing to enforce the major provision of the just-approved Proposition 314 according to Senate President Warren Petersen.
The Gilbert Republican said Wednesday the whole purpose behind the ballot measure was to allow state and local police to do the job the federal government was not doing: arrest those who enter the country at other than a port of entry.
“We literally mirrored federal law,” he told Capitol Media Services.
“The difference is Biden was not enforcing the law,” Petersen said. “Trump is going to enforce the law.
Anyway, the Senate president said there are plenty of other crimes to keep the Department of Public Safety and local law enforcement busy. Plus, if local police are not arresting migrants, there’s no need to for Arizonans to pick up the costs of incarcerating them.
Overall, the Grand Canyon Institute pegged the annual cost at about $325 million.
And there’s something else.
Even with voters approving the measure on a 3-2 margin, it could not be immediately enforced.
It was modeled after SB 4 in Texas where a federal appeals court has blocked implementation after agreeing with the Biden administration that it illegally infringes on the exclusive right of the federal government to regulate immigration.
And rather than Arizona picking its own fights with the feds, Prop 314 was crafted so that it can take effect no sooner than six months after there is a final court ruling upholding SB 4. Now, said Petersen, all that remains academic.
Still, he said, there are other provisions in the measure that still have value.
One requires state agencies to check the immigration status of those who apply for public benefits. Another makes it a crime to submit false documents or information to an employer to evade discovery of their status of being in the country without documentation.
There also is language that increases the prison terms for the “sale of lethal fentanyl” based on the claim that much of the supply of the drug or its precursor chemicals has come across the border.
“You’ve got stronger fentanyl penalties now,” Petersen said. “That’s a state crime and this is where it should be handled.”
But the measure was sold largely on the basis of ensuring the state can play a role in dealing with what has been an increasing number of people crossing the border.
“What it means is we don’t have to do the federal government’s job,” Petersen said. “This obviously frees up law enforcement so they can shift their priorities.”
The approval of Prop 314 was not a fluke in the 2024 election.
Immigration was one of the top issues on the federal level. And Trump gained traction on the national level – and here in Arizona where he picked up more than 53% of the vote – with promises to not just seal the border but to deport the approximately 11 million who have entered the country without authorization.
Biden himself put immigration on the public agenda when, in his first days as president, he rescinded the “Remain in Mexico” policy that Trump had instituted during his first term.
That related to the 2018 Migrant Protection Protocols. The intent was to force Homeland Security to either lock up asylum seeking from countries other than Mexico or Canada, as the law stated, or send them to Mexico as the law allowed.
Trump got the Mexican government to agree to accept these non-Mexican citizens. And by the end of 2020, the agency had enrolled more than 68,000 in the program.
But the day Biden was sworn into office, the agency suspended the program. It was terminated five months later.
That led to the TV images of flows of migrants finding the gaps and holes in the border wall and then surrendering to Border Patrol to seek asylum. Given limits on places to incarcerate them, most were simply released and given court dates to reappear.
The issue of border crossers was so strong in public sentiment that Biden this past summer backtracked a bit.
He issue a number of executive orders, including barring migrants from seeking asylum when encounters are high. That cut the flow. But it still left the whole issue on the political front burner. And it became a talking point for Republicans – and a political wedge issue.
GOP lawmakers first approved the plan to allow state and local police arrest those who enter the country at other than a port of entry as legislation and sent it to Hobbs. She vetoed it.
“I absolutely understand Arizonans’ frustration,” she said.
“Put me on the top of that list of the federal government’s failure to secure our southern border and the feeling of wanting to take it into your own hands,” Hobbs said. But the governor said this bill “is not the answer to that problem.”
So GOP lawmakers turned around and put it on the ballot, beyond her power to veto it, adding in the provisions on public benefits, employment documentation and fentanyl.
Petersen said while Trump won, that doesn’t mean Arizonans made a mistake in approving the measure.
“The way I see 314 now is, it’s a resource for us to have if we ever get a president again that won’t enforce federal law,” he said. “But, right now, Trump is going to enforce the law that’s in place.”
He also took a swat at the outgoing president who had argued at times that his ability to deal with the number of migrants crossing the border was limited by federal law.
“Biden didn’t need a new bill,” Petersen said. “What they needed was to enforce existing laws.”
That, however, raises another question: Are there actually enough Border Patrol officers to do the job.
A 2023 audit by the Department of Homeland Security found that 88% of border stations reported they were understaffed. That situation was complicated by many agents being reassigned to deal with migrants who were crossing the border and seeking asylum.
Petersen, however, said he is not worried that cost will be a factor based on the promises that Trump made.
“He said there’s no price tag on it,” the Senate president said of Trump.
“If they need local authorities’ help, we can help with that,” Petersen said. “But everything we’re hearing and seeing from them (the Trump administration) is they’re going to enforce the law.”
And just the election of Trump, he said, is making a difference.
“We’re hearing of people self-deporting,” Petersen said. And he said there is evidence that some of the groups that were headed to the United States are “breaking up.”
“Now that they know that Trump’s going to be the president, they’re heading out,” he continued. “So just knowing that the laws are going to be enforced, it’s already become a huge deterrent.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
