Testimony of Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon

Senate Subcommittee on Homeland Security

and Governmental Affairs

April 20, 2009

 

Chairman Lieberman, Senator McCain, and Senator Kyl, welcome.  We’re honored to have each of you in Phoenix.

Last month, I was invited to Washington, D.C., to offer testimony before a House Subcommittee on this very topic.  I went then, and I come here now to discuss an issue which must so urgently be discussed, debated, addressed and, to the best of our ability – resolved. 

There can be no doubt that a crisis exists at our border with Mexico.  And for reasons ranging from an historically bad economy -- and corruption at many levels of government and law enforcement on the Mexican side of the border – to various degrees of inattention on our own side of the border – to the border itself which is vast and porous – Phoenix finds itself at the center of this Perfect Storm – a storm that is growing increasingly violent, threatening and resource-consuming.  Homeland Security includes Home Town Security.  And that’s especially true in our city. 

Senators, I know a number of your colleagues, sitting 2,000 miles from Arizona, envision a border like you’ll find at El Paso and Juarez – or San Diego and Tijuana.  A road in, a road out, with railroad crossing-type arms to control the flow of cars and people.  But the Arizona/Mexico border is not like that.  It is 370 miles long – and hundreds of square miles in area.  It is hot, rugged, and has nooks and crannies, ravines and ridges that facilitate covert movement.  There is no “Great Wall of Phoenix” to separate us from the border.  And I promise you, what happens at the border, does not stay at the border.  It comes here.  Which is why we’re so deeply involved.

But what happens in Phoenix, doesn’t stay here, either.  The criminals continue on to Washington and Oregon.  Iowa and Kansas.  Maine and Connecticut.  We’re just a gateway for their cargo of drugs and people to come IN to the United States -- and for guns and money to go into Mexico.

That’s one of the reasons I welcome you to Phoenix.  So you’ll hear first hand that it is not simply a Phoenix problem.  It’s a national problem requiring a national solution.  We do need more funding.    Funding to continue our partnerships with ICE, with the DEA, with the FBI, with ATF.  We do need continued funding to go after the Worst of the Worst.  We do need continued funding to cut the drugs and the violence off at the border.  We do need continued funding to help and protect our own law enforcement personnel. 

And even though the most violent spillover has not yet reached Phoenix, the perception outside of Arizona is very different.  And that perception, if left unchecked, will start impacting the people who want to visit my community.  The ones who want to move to Phoenix.  The businesses that want to relocate to Phoenix.  And anyone who wants to invest in Phoenix.  And that will directly impact our economy, which impacts our revenue stream, which impacts our ability to expand the public safety efforts that are necessary to stem this tide.

We really do have a dichotomy here in Phoenix.  Our crime is actually down, in every category, over the last year.  And last year’s crime numbers were down from the year before THAT.   The same is true for most of the incorporated areas of this County.  So our cities have their priorities straight.  We know the first order, is to maintain order, and safety.  That’s why we plead with you, and your colleagues in the Senate and the House, to continue funding the federal agencies that we have so successfully been partnering with.

We need new funding for the Border Patrol, U.S. Marshals, DEA, FBI, ATF, ICE and Postal Agents – everyone who can go after dangerous felons by serving them the warrants that already have their names on them, instead of letting them collect dust on some closet shelf.

As you might suspect, the cost to Phoenix of border-related crime is staggering – and far beyond what most municipalities in this country are required to bear.  It’s the cost of intelligence.  The cost of equipment.  The cost of hiring new officers.  The cost of overtime. The cost of undercover operations that continue for months and, sometimes, years.  The ongoing surveillance operations.

In these challenging economic times, we must be particularly sensitive to the manner in which we allocate our increasingly-scarce resources.  That’s why Phoenix goes after the “Worst of the Worst”.  We arrest dangerous, violent felons:  drug smugglers, human smugglers, kidnappers, murderers, gang members and members of criminal syndicates – including those related to the cartels.

Fighting these dangerous, well-armed criminals – often armed at a level that meets or exceeds our own law enforcement and National Guard personnel – is challenging.  Sophisticated criminal operations require an expensive and sophisticated response.

And, a quick response.  People are being tortured.  People are being kidnapped.  Almost every night, Phoenix Police will get one or more calls from throughout the country and the world with variations of the same story – “My wife is being held in a Phoenix drop house and they say they will torture and kill her if we don’t pay them thousands of dollars”.   The response to that kind of call is incredibly “labor intensive”.  For each one of those calls, Phoenix will divert significant resources on the spot – as many as 60 officers -- to find, rescue and protect these kidnap victims.  Again, these intensive operations happen routinely.  The overtime hours are staggering; the personnel resources diverted from preventing or solving other crimes are massive.

Let me give you just a few short examples of the many Joint Operations – with our Federal Partners -- that have yielded profound results in just the past year: 

Operation Blank Check led to the felony indictments of 183 individuals.  This year-long investigation led directly to the arrests of hardcore gang members from 22 different gangs who trafficked in drugs and fraudulent checking schemes – totaling more than 3 million dollars -- to fund their operations.

Operation En Fuego was responsible for the break-up of a major Phoenix-based smuggling organization and the indictment of 35 individuals on felony charges related to the human smuggling of more than 10,000 individuals.

Operation Tumbleweed disrupted and stopped the illegal activities of 20 different organizations by following a common money trail right back to them all.  Drug smuggling.  Human smuggling.  Money laundering.  All disrupted and stopped.

Additionally, we shut down two of the largest syndicates in the nation that dealt in the tragedy of human smuggling.  Each year, 15,000 people were brought into the United States, through Phoenix, illegally.  And 30 million dollars went the other way.  They’re out of business now.

And we’re a member of The FBI Violent Street Gang Task Force – which has resulted in more than 300 felony arrests in the past year alone.

The Phoenix Police Department pioneered a program that has been very effective for us for more than two years.  We have actually embedded ICE agents, on a full-time basis, inside our Police Department.  That’s where their desks are.  And their presence and participation in key areas of enforcement has been invaluable.  They provide intelligence.  They have access to federal databases.  They partner with us – on the street -- to go after violent criminals, reduce violence and to establish a very successful task force to aggressively pursue kidnappers and those who invade homes.  We share expertise and intelligence – and we share in excellent results.

When this nation was founded, no one ever conceived or imagined that immigration enforcement was an issue that would ever fall to mayors and local police departments.  But here we are.  Not only are we being forced to step up our immigration efforts, but we also have an increased burden when it comes to gun crimes and white-collar crimes – connected to illegal immigration and formerly handled at the federal level. 

You’ve seen the pictures from Mexico.  You’ve seen what their criminal syndicates do to good Mexican police officers and honest Mexican politicians.   They don’t respect our border, and they won’t respect our police.  We need your continued help. 

In conclusion, let me say that the extreme violence – including the assassination of officers and government officials we are seeing on the Mexico side of our border – has not yet spilled over to the American side.  Even the kidnappings and shootings that have spilled over – in an effort to control the human, drug, gun, and money trafficking operations in Arizona -- almost exclusively involve what enforcement refers to as “Bad guys on bad guys”.  

 

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