The border budget reckoning

A budget line with baggage … We deport veterans now … And Tempe fears the Wildfire.

Earlier this year, a nearly $25 million border enforcement line item in Gov. Katie Hobbs’ budget set off a round of Democratic infighting and accusations that some Democrats were selling out their communities.

Democratic Sen. Sally Ann Gonzales warned fellow Democrats that supporting the spending was “a moral betrayal.” And Democratic Rep. Alma Hernandez said she won’t “support the terrorizing of (her) community” through the border-enforcement line item.

Republicans and other Democrats dismissed the pushback as unfounded, noting that exact same line item has been in the budget for more than a decade, and Democrats never took issue with it before.

The line item for the Gang & Immigration Intelligence Team Enforcement Mission, or GIITEM, pays for around 100 employees on the gang and immigration team to assist in “strictly enforcing all federal laws relating to illegal aliens,” and help county sheriffs and attorneys investigate complaints of “employment” of undocumented people.

The state agency that runs GIITEM, the Arizona Department of Public Safety (DPS), tried to assuage Democrats’ concerns by releasing a statement insisting GIITEM “does not engage in direct immigration enforcement.”

While GIITEM began as an anti-gang task force in the 1990s, the Legislature gave it pretty explicit immigration-enforcement duties in 2006.

And this year, GIITEM’s resources are being deployed under very different circumstances.

The Pinal County Sheriff’s Office is among the top recipients of GIITEM funding, and loves showing off border-related enforcement on YouTube. In this video, a deputy points a gun at a car filled with people he suspects are undocumented immigrants, while another deputy chases down a passenger who fled. Border Patrol later takes everyone into custody.

Year one of President Donald Trump’s second term has already seen federal agents zip-tying children, longtime residents pushed into detention centers and entire neighborhoods rattled by surprise raids. The Trump administration made a concerted push this year to get local law enforcement to perform federal immigration functions.

Suddenly, the routine budget item carries a lot more weight.

Nine Arizona law enforcement agencies currently have agreements to cooperate with ICE on immigration enforcement through different versions of the 287(g) program.

Most of Arizona’s agreements give local agencies limited authority — things like detaining and transporting people to ICE facilities or executing immigration-related warrants. But the Pinal County Attorney’s Office has what’s called a “Task Force Model,” which gives local agencies “limited immigration authority,” including the ability to arrest and interrogate suspected undocumented people.

That Task Force Model is what former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio used to unleash Arizona’s infamous immigration sweep era, and ICE cancelled the contract with his office in 2011 after a civil rights investigation found his office racially profiled Latinos.

Unfortunately, Arpaio’s case wasn’t an anomaly. There’s a fine line between assisting in enforcing federal immigration laws and actually enforcing them, and Arizona has been known to cross it.

In 2010, SB1070 made it a state crime to be in Arizona without valid immigration papers and allowed police to arrest anyone they believed had committed an offense that could lead to deportation. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled the law preempted federal authority and overturned major portions of SB1070 in 2012.

But local police are still an increasingly key player in immigration enforcement here in Arizona.

When a DPS officer called ICE on a man whose truck was side-swiped while driving through Phoenix in July, for example, there was no state-level crime to arrest him under. But the officer made the man talk to an ICE agent over the phone, per the Phoenix New Times.

That kind of coordination — a sprawling network of local immigration tipsters — is central to the Trump agenda. And it works.

Throughout the first three months of 2025, Phoenix’s federal courthouse handled 152 criminal immigration cases that originated from local police stops and arrests, far more than those initiated directly by ICE, according to the Republic.

And Arizona has steadily expanded its support for local border operations. The last state budget Gov. Doug Ducey signed into law increased a certain local border fund tenfold, and it has grown under Hobbs.

That money flows through GIITEM — the line item Democrats were told not to worry about.

The subaccount

About half of the $24.7 million lawmakers gave to the GIITEM line item is for the salaries of DPS’s GIITEM employees.

But the network under GIITEM is complicated. It has multiple funding streams for initiatives besides immigration enforcement, like preventing gang violence and drug trafficking.

The General Appropriations Act lays out pretty explicit purposes for the GIITEM funding.

Last week, lawmakers on the Joint Legislative Budget Committee approved $1.8 million in spending for three programs under the GIITEM subaccount funded by surcharges on fines for all criminal offenses and some civil offenses.

State law says the subaccount “shall be used for law enforcement purposes related to border security, including border personnel.” But it can also be used for other things, like “safety equipment.” Unfortunately, the JLBC vote was tucked into a consent calendar package and approved without discussion, but the Legislature’s financial advisors are expert note takers.

The three programs funded through that subaccount range in specificity. The Detention Liaison Officer Program is for corrections workers to get information on “activities related to border crime” in jails and prisons. But the Border Security and Law Enforcement program is more of a catch-all grant for local law enforcement to “fund border security operations, personnel and safety equipment.”

Through the Border County Officer program, local police actually join DPS’s GIITEM Task Force while still under the direct command of their local agency.

We tried to get answers from DPS on how any of those programs are “not engag(ing) in direct immigration enforcement,” as DPS told lawmakers. The department didn’t exactly clear it up.

In the corrections workers program, for example, DPS Public Information Officer Raul Garcia said while officers may get “border crime-related” intel, they’re “not restricted” from doing other routine work. And local police can’t turn into ICE agents through the Border County Officer program.

“For most state and local law enforcement officers, that means they can enforce only state and local laws, which could include narcotics and human trafficking, but not federal immigration law,” Garcia said.

Given that state statutes seem to pretty explicitly tell GIITEM recipients to do “strict immigration enforcement,” we took a look at how they’re spending the money.

A breakdown of the GIITEM subaccount funding lawmakers approved. (JLBC)

Local border support

The largest GIITEM border spending effort is completely separate from the subaccount, and it’s paid for with the state’s giant pool of tax dollars in the General Fund, not criminal fees.

Over the past five fiscal years, DPS handed out more than $43 million in “Local Border Support” grants to local police agencies.

This year, DPS has $18.2 million to hand out, per the JLBC’s latest analysis.

The local border grants, formerly known as “Border Strike Task Force,” grants, got a huge boost when Ducey allocated $12 million to the fund as part of a record-setting border spending package in 2022.

After Hobbs took office in 2023, the grant’s name changed to “Local Border Support.” In January, she gave out more than $17 million worth of them.

But there’s a wide range of expenses that can fall under DPS’s explanation for grant applicants: “costs associated with prosecuting and detaining individuals who are charged with drug trafficking, human smuggling, illegal immigration and other border-related crimes.”

How those funds are spent depends on the politics and priorities of the local governments receiving them.

• Cochise County spent $5 million of its funds to build the Oletski Border Operations Center, a 37,000-square-foot building in Sierra Vista where state, local and federal employees monitor the border. Last fiscal year, the county received $1.4 million, including $100,000 for helicopter operations, $55,000 for nine grapplers and $60,000 for cloud storage for SABRE cameras. The county’s SABRE unit uses a network of game cameras to monitor illegal crossing hot zones.

• In 2015, Pinal County used $24,000 of GIITEM funds to lease hangar space for the sheriff’s aviation unit. In 2023, the county received nearly $1 million in local border grants, which paid for sheriff spending like four off-highway vehicles for $250,00, five sets of night vision goggles for $85,000 and a Valorence surveillance system and cameras for $40,000.

• Apache County used a $230,000 grant for two Chevrolet Tahoes and a Dodge Ram pickup in 2024.

• The Nogales City Council accepted $1.8 million in grants this year for a 24-hour operations center for its police department, a K-9 program and mobile data services for patrol cars.

• Gila County got more than $624,000 this year to fund three positions on its K-9 unit and license plate readers.

Some of that spending isn’t overtly political. But Arizona politicians have never had trouble finding political uses for GIITEM.

Republican lawmakers cut off Maricopa County’s access to local border-support funds in 2018, the first year Democratic Sheriff Paul Penzone took office after Arpaio’s 24-year reign.

And last year, Republican lawmakers on the JLBC took away $250,000 in border grants for Santa Cruz County Sheriff David Hathaway after he said he wouldn’t enforce the new “Secure the Border Act” that makes illegally entering Arizona a state crime. Voters approved that last year as Prop 314, but whether it’s enforceable depends on how federal courts rule on a virtually identical law in Texas.

In the meantime, even when local law enforcement operates under a 287(g) contract to more directly enforce immigration laws, the state can’t make its own immigration enforcement laws.

We’ll see if the courts decide Arizona can enforce the measure, which many have called a revival of SB1070.

We’ll also see if the Democratic uproar over that routine GIITEM funding was misplaced — or prescient.

Doesn’t matter who you fight for: A Purple Heart war veteran was deported from Arizona over the weekend, Gloria Rebecca Gomez writes for the Arizona Mirror. The family of José Barco, who fought in Iraq, says they still don’t know where Barco was deported to. Barco has spent almost a year in different detention centers and was previously almost sent to Venezuela, where he was born. Before his time in ICE custody, Barco had spent the past 15 years in prison, where he was serving a 52-year sentence on two counts of attempted first-degree murder and one count of menacing after he fired a handgun into a crowd of teenagers at a house party. Barco’s supporters said he has struggled with PTSD, brain injury and alcohol misuse. Right after he was released for good behavior in January, ICE agents took him into custody.

It’s file time: Now that a vote is inevitable, Republican U.S. Reps. Andy Biggs and Eli Crane said they will support the measure to release files on Jeffrey Epstein. The duo is among many Republicans who have spent months refusing to sign onto a discharge petition to put the measure up for a vote, per the Republic’s Laura Gersony. Arizona’s four other Republican Congressmen remain “conspicuously quiet” on the issue, Gersony writes.

“What I’m in favor of is releasing, and being transparent with, all the documentation that they have that they can release,” Biggs said.

Chat(GPT), are we cooked?: An Arizona ad-hoc committee came together on Friday to discuss the threat of artificial intelligence in politics, Jerod MacDonald-Evoy writes for the Mirror. The Committee on Election Integrity and Florida-style Voting Systems, led by Republican Rep. Alexander Kolodin, brought in AI experts to unpack “protecting elections in the age of artificial intelligence.” Diane Cooke, an AI fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. said AI has created new political threats and deepfake videos have targeted politics.

“It is critical to understand we have reached an inflection point with AI technologies,” Cooke said.

What about gifts from Santa?: Gov. Katie Hobbs announced she is “looking at proposals” for laws that would force the disclosure of political gifts from companies seeking government contracts, after a series of pay-to-play scandals rocked her administration, Capitol scribe Howie Fischer reports. Six months ago, Hobbs vetoed a bill from Republican Sen. T.J. Shope that would have forced those disclosures, calling it a “political stunt.”

Water isn’t wet if you have none: Hobbs said last week that upstream states aren’t doing their part in conserving and sharing water in the Colorado River system, the Associated Press reports. Hobbs spoke as the seven states that rely on the Colorado River continue to argue over how to manage the river as water supplies continue to dwindle. Earlier this year, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation told states to cut a deal by Nov. 11, but the day passed with no plan or announcement of a solution. Meanwhile, Chandler updated its drought management plan last week in preparation for cuts in water supply, Ken Sain writes for San Tan Sun News. The city said that while it doesn’t know what the cut will be, they are prepared for many cities in Central Arizona to face cuts in 2027.

There is never a drought of news, so make sure you’re subscribed.

In other, other news

The White Mountain Apache Police Department identified the remains of a missing Indigenous girl, who had disappeared last month without a Turquoise Alert being sent (Molly Ottman / Mountain Daily Star) … Michael Robert Wiseman, who fled from Arizona years ago while on probation for sex crimes, was arrested earlier this month in France for sexually assaulting a child (Associated Press) … Two Arizona men where indicted on 80 counts of cockfighting after Pinal County Attorney’s Office seized over 100 roosters (Sara Filips / Fox10) … And Hickman’s Family Farm announced it will be acquired by the joint venture of Brazilian company and food organization after it lost millions of chickens due to bird flu earlier this year (Kylier Werner / KTAR).

Remember a few months back when the Tempe City Council shut down its meeting because someone posted a meme from Game of Thrones depicting Queen Cersei Lannister blowing up the Great Sept of Baelor in a green fireball — and city officials were worried about an “imminent threat that could be similar to the explosion scene in the animated video”?

If you thought that was the most ridiculous part of this story, well, check out 12News’ Brahm Resnik’s report on the fallout of that police investigation.

The short version is police arrested former Cox Communications manager Kathleen Tierney for posting the “threat,” which included the meme and text reading, “Konner Culver watching tonight’s council meeting.”

Konner Culver is the internet handle of an anonymous Tempe City Council troll.

And search warrants show that Culver is actually former deputy Tempe city manager Steven Methvin, who now lives in Oregon.

There’s another eyebrow-raising detail: Tierney called former Tempe City Manager Andrew Ching 130 times that week. Ching is now the town manager in Paradise Valley, and he and Tierney are apparently old college friends.

And he picked her up from jail, per the police report.