Board of Supervisors refuses sheriff’s demand for vote on anti-smuggling unit

Sheriff Paul Babeu asked the Pinal County Board of Supervisors to take an emergency vote Wednesday on his proposal to create a seven-member anti-smuggling enforcement unit, but Board of Supervisors Chairman Pete Rios (D-Dudleyville) denied the sheriff’s request.

During a later recess, he explained that a vote could not be taken because the agenda did not call for it.

“It wasn’t on the agenda,” Rios said. “We would have been violating our own laws, public meeting laws, if we’d have taken a vote and not notified the public that we were voting on this particular issue today.”

Babeu’s proposal, which he first presented in detail to the board on Oct. 13, is designed to prevent foreign cartels from engaging in drug smuggling and human trafficking through Pinal County’s remote desert areas, including those located south of Maricopa. The establishment of the Anti-Smuggling Enforcement Unit, which would consist of six officers and one sergeant, would cost $1,044,219 for the first year and $501,716 for a second year. Babeu has said that the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office would pay $540,000 of the proposal’s two-year price tag.

At the meeting, a four-person panel invited by the Board of Supervisors provided information on illegal immigration and drug-related crime in Arizona that seemed to undercut Babeu’s claims of an emergency. The panel included Joseph Koehler, assistant U.S. Attorney; Victor Manjarrez Jr., chief patrol agent for the Tucson Sector of the U.S. Border Patrol; Matthew Allen, special agent in charge for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Homeland Security Investigations; and John Gurule, deputy field office director for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Enforcement Removal Operations.

Manjarrez said that the 3,300 Border Patrol agents in the Tucson Sector arrested 212,000 illegal immigrants in 2009, far fewer than the 615,000 illegal immigrants arrested annually a decade ago.

Top Arizona ICE investigator Matthew Allen added that state and local police are presenting fewer people for deportation hearings, with deportation referrals down from 7,000 to about 4,000 over the past three years.

These comments align with the most recent FBI crime statistics released in September, which show that crime in Arizona dropped sharply in 2009, with overall violent crime declining by 13.9 percent. Property crime dropped by nearly 12 percent during the same period.

Only one state in the union, South Dakota, showed a greater drop in violent crime than Arizona in 2009, according to the FBI.

Koehler said that a serious problem exists, but did not characterize it as an emergency. “There is no doubt that we are confronting a very significant problem in terms of folks coming into Arizona … and perpetrating illegal activity, whether it’s alien-smuggling, contraband-smuggling, drugs and so forth going north, and money and guns going south.”

He said that the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Phoenix prosecuted approximately 3,200 felony and 22,000 misdemeanor illegal-immigration cases during the 2009 fiscal year along with 969 felony drug cases against 1,519 defendants. Both numbers were up in 2010 according to Koehler, but have not been finalized.

Babeu then addressed the board, arguing that the proposal should be voted upon immediately.

“I don’t know what this board doesn’t understand about the word emergency, but those of us that work in law enforcement do,” Babeu said. “I’m asking this board to take a vote today – yes or no – on this issue.”

District 2 Supervisor Bryan Martyn (R- Gold Canyon) joined Babeu in asking that the board vote on the Anti-Smuggling Enforcement Unit proposal immediately, but Chris Roll, deputy county attorney, said that a vote could not be taken on Wednesday.

“This agenda item is a presentation,” Roll said. “There is no action item associated with this. There can be no vote today.”

“We will decide probably within the next week or two whether we’re going to fund this proposal or whether maybe we need some additional deputy sheriffs for Silverbell Estates and Arizona City,” Rios said. “That’s where we’re at.”