(The Center Square) – Arizona’s southern border continues to be a major focus amid a migrant surge and the closure of the Lukeville Port of Entry by federal authorities.
As a result, Gov. Katie Hobbs ordered National Guard troops to assist with the situation on Friday, but there is still general concern about the border crisis and its impact on local southwestern communities.
Former Arizona Supreme Court Justice Andrew Gould, who is now an attorney at Holtzman Vogel, told The Center Square that food safety is a concern regardless of where it is along the border.
“It’s putting a lot of financial pressure on them. Food safety is number one with them,” Gould said.
“So everything from undocumented immigrants walking through fields, to the trash, to having to do additional testing and treatment of water in the Colorado River as people cross through that water. They have to be ever vigilant,” he continued.
Although the state is somewhat limited in terms of actual border enforcement without facing lawsuits, Gould did give suggestions on what the government could do to protect farmers and ranchers in the area.
“I think you have to focus on the property rights of citizens who are on the border,” he said. “And that means doing things to protect farmers, doing things to protect ranchers. Those are simple things based on property rights, and it can go from trying to make sure and help them bear the costs of intrusions in fields and trying to keep the water supply, treatment, and all that to enforcing simple trespass and criminal damage statutes that occur on the property.”
“And the goal, I would think is you’re not trying to get the mother and three little kids that’s trespassing on property –that’s not your focus. But when you have backpackers coming across 30 at a time, that is certainly a very frightening thing for people in these border communities,” he said.
The Arizona Department of Agriculture estimates a $23.3 billion economic impact from the sector generally. Some of the most popular crops in southern Arizona include lettuce and cotton. Lettuce, as well as other vegetables, is commonly harvested in the winter and spring months in Arizona, according to the department’s harvest schedule.
Despite the issues, Gould cautioned against viewing the communities as a monolith. He said he would like to see them perceived as more than their immigration problems, especially since the communities are typically used as a pass-through to other destinations.
“Painting the picture of these border communities as just being destroyed by illegal immigration is wrong. They’re not. They’re dealing with costs. But these are still wonderful communities, human communities, a wonderful community, you know, Douglas and Bisbee and Sierra Vista, they’re wonderful communities,” Gould said. “They’re being impacted, but portraying them as just being destroyed by legal immigration is unfair and unfair to the people that live in those communities and the businesses that work in those communities because there’s still wonderful communities.”
