At the beginning of the first week of December – the month when more than 25 percent of Arizona’s cross-border holiday shopping and tourism occurs – the federal government shut down the Lukeville Port of Entry. Yup, they closed the legal way to cross into Arizona from Sonoyta, Mexico, so that Border Patrol agents and Customs and Border Protection officers could deal with all of the illegal crossings in the area.
I can’t decide: Does stopping people from crossing the border legally (which is causing all sorts of unintended consequences) so that federal authorities can process a flood of people crossing illegally (and doing so virtually consequence-free) qualify as ironic or just stupid?
Danny Seiden, president and CEO of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce & Industry, told me on KTAR News that, in December, the amount of money spent in Arizona by Mexicans approaches a billion dollars.
Lukeville is also where people leaving the Valley cross the border to get to Puerto Peñasco, Mexico – generally known to gringos as “Rocky Point.” It’s also colloquially known as “Arizona’s Beach” (at least until California falls into the ocean).
No matter what people called it previously, after the Lukeville border crossing closed, Puerto Peñasco/Rocky Point might as well have been “Playa Muerta” – because its beach was dead. One week into Lukeville’s closure, the director of the Las Palomas Beach & Golf Resort said on social media that Puerto Peñasco’s local lodging accommodations had experienced more than $500,000 in cancellations.
With all this info in hand, my earlier “irony vs. stupidity” question has me leaning toward the latter. Hurting Arizona’s economy (and Mexico’s) probably wasn’t in President Joe Biden’s reelection plans. However, capitulating to the far-left wing of his party (by propping the door at the border open) is having that effect – and could consequently have the effect of him losing Arizona (with our swing-state status) in the 2024 election.
An NBC News poll shows 74 percent of Americans support more funding for border security – including 58 percent of Democrats.
When U.S. Rep. Juan Ciscomani (R-AZ) says, “under this administration, every state is a border state… forced to deal with the consequences of a border that is becoming little more than a line on a map,” don’t assume he’s just another Republican who doesn’t understand the migrant’s plight. He was born in Sonora, the Mexican state adjacent to Lukeville.
But what really has me picking stupid over ironic is this: Biden could choose California or Texas to be overrun in the border-resource-Whac-A-Mole game instead of Arizona. Neither are swing states. Cali’s a lock for Biden in 2024 (and claims to welcome migrants), and his chances of winning Texas hover around 0.0002 percent.
But, no. Instead, he puts his failed border policy on fullest display in the battleground state of Arizona, leading me to ask one last question: Is the White House more lacking in immigration intellect or political perspicacity?
It’s a coin toss.
