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Responding to Napolitano's 2005 state of emergency declaration, Congressman J.D. Hayworth attacked Napolitano for leeching off the federal teat and suggested that what the governor ought to do is call out the National Guard instead.
An anti-immigration barnburner, Representative Hayworth's crack-skull theatrics made him notorious. Washingtonian magazine identified Hayworth in 1998 as the second-biggest "windbag" on the Hill after surveying 1,200 congressional staffers. He once suggested that Arizona ranchers had discovered the hastily abandoned prayer rugs and Korans of Muslims sneaking across the Mexican border into the United States. Hayworth's dissemination of this sort of Internet gossip — mixed with his propensity for using disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who provided the Arizona congressman with sports-arena skyboxes for fund-raising — eventually led to his ouster by voters.
And yet Napolitano took to heart Hayworth's idea of the militarization of the border.
Aware that the congressman was considering a run against her, Napolitano deployed the Guard to Arizona's border with Mexico.
"She won accolades from every anti-immigrant group in the country," said Alfredo Gutierrez. "Using troops was stunning, shocking."
Gutierrez drew a distinction between her deployment of soldiers and the patrols of citizen militias who were also active on the border. The Guard was not used to hunt down Mexicans.
"She read the political tea leaves, so she deployed troops, but she also limited the troops to a supporting role digging ditches," said Gutierrez.
While the Border Patrol attempted to beef up staffing, the Arizona National Guard busied itself with support work that allowed the expansion of the controversial border fence that now occupies approximately 200 miles.
Still, Napolitano opposes fencing off our border, having rather famously noted that when you build a 50-foot fence, smugglers build a 51-foot ladder.
Not only did she send the Guard in to support work she did not believe in, she dispatched the troops shorthanded.
Last year, the Associated Press reported that the Arizona National Guard lacked more than $400 million in equipment, including some 100 trucks, tractor-trailers, forklifts, flatbed trailers, mobile tool shops, M-16 rifles, fuel tankers, and radios. It deployed with 39 percent of its "mission essential" materials.
Governor Napolitano hardly skipped a beat.
"We are still sound to deal with the kinds of natural catastrophes we're likely to experience in Arizona absent something truly unusual," said the governor in response to news reports. It was not a reassuring assessment and brought to mind the sort of double-speak made famous after Hurricane Katrina, not to mention the equipment issues that surfaced after the attacks on the World Trade Center when first-responders found their communications equipment deficient.
Between the virulent pedagogy of Hayworth and his anti-immigrant ilk and the superficial shape-shifting of Napolitano, Mexicans crossing our border remain Arizona's most volatile issue.
Since 2004, Arizona has counted a yearly average of more than 200 Mexican bodies in our deserts — people who perished on their way north. As of September 2008, we were on track with 152 corpses.
In response to a militarized border — as well as checkpoints, fences, obstacles — the drug cartels have moved into smuggling in a big way.
They have brought violence and extortion to our cities.
Phoenix police recently reported that the Prohibition-like criminalized smuggling has also spawned 266 kidnappings for ransom and 300 home invasions within the city's immigrant community.
Police estimate that, because of fear of deportation, the actual numbers for kidnappings and home invasions could be three times higher.
Janet Napolitano strode onto the national stage in 1991, as a key player in the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee. She prepared witness testimony on behalf of Anita Hill.
The hearings foreshadowed Napolitano's political strength of obscuring failure while rallying a constituency.
"It really did bring home how issues of women really didn't have an avenue to be heard at that time," Napolitano said of the experience.
This posturing conveniently overlooked the fact that the Thomas hearing provided an unprecedented "avenue": the United States Senate. Far from being ignored or shunted aside, the proceedings were broadcast throughout the land. The Hill allegations were, in fact, heard; Napolitano simply failed to block the ascension of Thomas.
Shortly thereafter, President Bill Clinton nominated Napolitano to be the United States Attorney for the state of Arizona, despite the fact that she had never prosecuted a single case.
Her appointment was delayed for more than a year as the Senate wrangled over whether or not she had coached a critical Hill witness to change testimony.
As an inexperienced United States Attorney, Napolitano's political calculations would protect Arizona's most notorious violator of human rights, a sheriff who would go on to campaign in the presidential primaries as an anti-immigration spokesman.
Governor Napolitano teamed up with Sheriff Joe Arpaio in a jointly signed letter of complaint to the head of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, on August 14, 2006.
The Napolitano and Arpaio correspondence is, frankly, bizarre.
Their complaints regard the head of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) in Arizona, Robert Medina. The governor and the sheriff wanted more cooperation.
But Medina's departure from Arizona to Texas had already been announced. He was replaced by Alonzo Pena (who has now been replaced by Matthew Allen).
The note, and the accompanying press release, appeared to be a political stunt to shore up the governor's tough-on-immigration credentials before the fall election. And her coordinated effort with Arpaio would bear rotten fruit.
At the time of the letter, Arpaio had twice been refused efforts to have his deputies cross-trained under 287(g) to arrest illegal aliens.
Once Arpaio's staff and his posse were trained by ICE, the sheriff and his deputies stepped up anti-immigrant enforcement and all hell broke loose.
Arpaio's raids became infamous nationally. His highly publicized sweeps into Mexican neighborhoods saw people with brown skin pulled over unilaterally.
Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon, in a singular act of courage, demanded this past April that the FBI investigate the sheriff's alleged racial profiling, accusing Arpaio of "a pattern and practice of conduct that includes discriminatory harassment, improper stops, searches, and arrests."
