DPS says it couldn’t probe human smuggling
Despite taxpayers providing nearly $100 million to fund a task force on border crimes, Arizona DPS said it was powerless to investigate a suspected human smuggling case along a Phoenix freeway.
Despite taxpayers shelling out nearly $100 million to fund a task force bent on stopping border-related crimes, the Arizona Department of Public Safety said Friday it was powerless to investigate a suspected human smuggling case along a Phoenix freeway.
In a series of posts on Twitter, the Arizona Department of Public Safety described an incident during which a trooper stopped a van that carried 17 people suspected of being in the country illegally. The trooper had to let them go, the agency said, because federal authorities wouldn’t get involved.
It is not clear from the Twitter postings exactly how the incident started nor how it ended.
The DPS said in its Tweet that it cited the driver and impounded the vehicle, but did not say what the infraction was.
A photo posted by DPS on Twitter showed a white van parked by the side of the freeway, with a tow truck in front of it. There was a group of people sitting along the gravel patch between the freeway and the off-ramp. It is not clear from the tweets if everyone was transported somewhere for release.
The name of the driver, who was a U.S. citizen, according to the DPS, was not released.
Despite the DPS’ claim that it could do nothing with the suspected migrants, the agency has a special task force created by Gov. Doug Ducey that was supposed to focus on border-related crimes.
Ducey’s office was instrumental in creating the Border Strike Force, claiming it would do the work the federal government refused to do. The Strike Force, according to statistics released to The Arizona Republic, has apprehended more than 650 immigrants suspected of being in the country illegally.
It is not clear to what extent federal authorities were involved in those apprehensions. Nor is it clear whether any previous lack of participation from federal authorities prevented other detentions.
Arizona passed a law, known as SB 1070, that requires law enforcement officers
to inquire about a person’s immigration status if they have a reasonable suspicion a person is in the country illegally.
But the Arizona attorney general has advised officers that a traffic stop cannot be prolonged in order to determine whether someone has committed a civil immigration infraction.
That opinion, however, does allow law enforcement to investigate suspected criminal violations of federal immigration law.
It is not clear, from the DPS tweets, whether the trooper made any attempt to ascertain whether the driver was engaged in human smuggling. Nor did the DPS make clear whether the suspected migrants found in the vehicle were interviewed as potential witnesses.
Ducey unleashed a series of tweets on Friday criticizing the federal government for doing nothing about the situation along Interstate 10, near the border of Phoenix and Chandler.
Ducey said the administration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris “needs to get its head out of the sand when it comes to the crisis at our border.”
Ducey wrote, “This lack of action defies
all logic, and flies in the face of the law.”
Ducey’s office did not return a request for comment on whether the governor thought the Border Strike Force should have responded.
The DPS did not return a request for comment on why that task force was not called to the scene.
The Border Strike Force was created in 2015, fulfilling a campaign promise from Ducey to secure the state’s border with Mexico.
The Legislature has appropriated nearly $99.5 million for the Border Strike Force since its creation, budget documents show.
Originally, it was designed to combat drug smuggling in what officials described as the wide-open desert.
But, according to then-DPS Director Frank Milstead, the task force shifted to patrolling freeways and urban areas after discovering drug traffic in the desert had gone quiet.
The task force’s mission also changed to encompass human smuggling, according to Ducey. Though, in brief remarks to reporters in 2018, he suggested it was part of the mission all along.
“We envisioned the Strike Force working in a way that protects public safety, with a priority on the border, with a priority on drug cartels, human trafficking and child sex trafficking,” Ducey said in 2018.
The task force racked up impressive drug seizure statistics, but most did not come through intelligence operations. The cases heralded by the agency came from troopers making traffic stops.
Aside from drugs, statistics released by the DPS show that the Strike Force has found 690 “suspected illegal alien” subjects through Sept 30, 2019, the latest figures the department has released.
The statistics also show a pattern of the Border Strike Force working far from the border.
More cases listed by the DPS as Border Strike Force cases took place in Maricopa County, which encompasses the Phoenix metro area, than from the four Arizona counties that share a border with Mexico.
The Strike Force did not merit much mention by either Ducey or the DPS after the governor’s 2018 reelection.
Then — ahead of a trip to the border in March accompanied by U.S. Sen Rick Scott, R-Florida, and a crew from ABC News — Ducey issued a news release that trumpeted three drug busts made by the Strike Force.
None of those busts occurred near the border.
One occurred in a part of northern Arizona so remote that someone driving from the border would have to leave the state and circle back, past the Grand Canyon, to reach it.
Five years after the Strike Force’s creation, it is still not clear what taxpayers have received for the more than $90 million dollars they have spent.
The Strike Force budget is baked into the overall budget of the state DPS, along with the annual $10 million earmarked by the Legislature in 2007 specifically to allow another task force, called GIITEM, to deter border-related crimes.
Even the number of people assigned to the Border Strike Force is not clear.
The DPS has said both that there are 19 and 107 personnel assigned to the force.