Migrants following the rules, unlike AG

Late last week, at the exact same time and in the exact same place, the people of Arizona were reminded, again, that lawbreakers are not born but they can be elected.

At just about the time Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne was being informed for the second time that he had violated campaign-finance laws during his 2010 run for office, a group of local activists were staging a demonstration at Horne’s office.

The group is upset by Horne’s decision to sue the Maricopa County Community College District for wanting to charge in-state tuition to the young people who qualify for the federal government’s deferred-action program.

The in-state tuition rate is $78 per credit-hour. Horne wants to force the district to charge the out-of-state tuition rate of $317 per credit-hour.

The young students who would be affected are eligible to be in the country under President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Essentially, the program allows undocumented immigrants who are age 30 or younger and who were brought to this country as minors to apply to stay in the United States.

Horne’s most ardent supporters consider these young people to be lawbreakers, though most were carried into the country as babies.

Treating them like criminals is like charging an infant in a stroller with shoplifting after her mother is caught pocketing a necklace at a department store.

“The policy is particularly ridiculous coming from someone like Horne, who has his own problems,” said Randy Parraz, president of Citizens for a Better Arizona, which organized the demonstration at the Attorney General’s Office.

Ten individuals were arrested in connection with the pro-

test at Horne’s office.

Just about the same time that happened, Yavapai County Attorney Sheila Polk ordered Horne to return nearly $400,000 in donations to an independent-expenditure committee that Polk said illegally coordinated its efforts with Horne’s campaign.

Polk, like Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery before her, found Horne to be in violation of the law.

Each of them is a Republican. Montgomery told

“Same investigation, same evidence, same conclusion. I hope Republican primary voters are paying attention.” So do I. The students who will be affected by Horne’s lawsuit have done nothing but try to improve themselves. They’ve worked hard at school and now want to move on to higher education. Quadrupling the cost of their tuition will prevent many of them from doing so.

One of the people arrested at Horne’s office was Manuel Saldana, a graduate of Trevor Browne High School in Phoenix who served two tours in Afghanistan.

He issued a statement saying, “I’m doing this for my sister, Angie. Angie is a DACA student at Phoenix College, who graduated top of her class from North High School. Angie wants to be a dentist and dreams of making Arizona smile. It breaks my heart that AG Horne is threatening her future. I defended our country twice in Afghanistan and now my conscience calls my sister’s dream. She tells me that if this lawsuit goes through, she’ll have to move to New Mexico. I’m standing up today to keep my sister in Arizona and to keep my sister in school.”

Horne’s attorney and his office spokeswoman said he will be vindicated.

“It’s the same as we’ve seen before, basically speculating that there were conversations when there’s really no evidence of that,” his lawyer said.

In the meantime, Parraz said his group will gather at Horne’s office again today.

“Horne probably thinks that doing what he’s doing to these students appeals to his base, but I believe he would get a lot more Republican support if he did just the opposite,” he said. “There is no reason to sue the district over this. These are Dream Act kids. They have followed all the rules. No one is saying they did anything wrong.”

The same cannot be said of the attorney general.