Alicia Menendez On Fox News Talking About Border Security

NDN Senior Policy Advisor Alicia Menendez was on Fox News morning show Americas Newsroom with Paul Babeu, Pinal County Sherriff to talk about Border Security.

Officer Babeu is a bit of celebrity these days, he had a staring roll in an infamous piece of campaign propaganda featuring Arizona Senator John McCain. For those of you who have not seen the ad Complete the Danged Fence, it is below.

Sherriff Babeu is presented as a law enforcement leader on the Fox News segment, however he has had far more experience as a politician.

During the segment with Alicia, he alludes to being from the East Coast, this is significant because it draws attention to who Paul Babeu was before he came to Arizona.

In a recent profile done in the Arizona Daily Star it was revealed that Sherriff Babeu, was born and raised in North Adams, Mass. and was elected to the City Council at age 18. The Sherriff, now 41, moved to Arizona after losing a Mayoral bid in his home town. The full profile can be read here, excerpt below:

But to some, including longtime Arizona law enforcement officials, Babeu is a pretender. Many officers question how 3 1/2 years spent patrolling Chandler's streets, plus a border deployment, qualify him as a national expert on border security, said Bill Richardson, a retired Mesa police officer who also worked for 10 years on a Drug Enforcement Administration task force in Pima, Pinal and other counties.

"It would be like a college freshman pre-med student who's had one anatomy class telling a veteran pathologist how to do an autopsy," said Richardson, who has followed Babeu closely since 2008.

Smuggling has long occurred in western Pinal County, but Babeu's claims of soaring violence have more to do with his own political aspirations than reality, Richardson said.

"What he's very skillfully doing, much like (Joe) Arpaio and (State Sen. Russell) Pearce, is he's creating fear or fanning the flames of fear, that the undocumented are the root cause of crime in Arizona," Richardson said. "In fact, they are not."

He has had far more experience as a politician then as a law enforcement officer.

His ability to spin a story is on display in this segment

Sherriff Babeu starts the segment by bemoaning the lack of federal support for the border. Going so far as to say that in a time of need the federal government is actually suing the state instead of sending troops to the border. He then claims that President Obama is playing political games with our national security.

There are a couple of things wrong with this logic: As Alicia mentions in the clip President Obama is sending an unprecedented amount of resources to the border. This is a fact, just ask  The Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection and John Morton, director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement HERE.

Sherriff Babeu's other assertion that in a time of need, the federal government is suing the state is the worst kind of political spin. The federal law suit has nothing to do with border security and everything to do with SB1070.

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer has admitted that SB1070 has nothing to do with border security. So saying that the President is playing political games with national security while making an erroneous connection between the federal government lawsuit against SB1070 and Arizona's Border security is a little hypocritical.

It is entirely possible to work towards securing the border, and file a lawsuit against an unconstitutional state law.

But I digress...

When asked if the border is in fact safer, he recounted a single instance when his deputy encountered border violence, as an example of out of control violence. To be fair he never answered one way or the other if violence was down on the border.

Crime is down along the border, in fact this is well established by the FBI:

Further evidence can be seen here Arizona Violent Crime Down, Except Under Tough Anti-Immigrant Sherriff

The full clip can be seen below. <

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